How to install Puppy and XFCE4

[ljones]

Hi,

I've been following the instructions on this website;

http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.p ... ight=xfce4

I have xfce4 up and running, but the menus seem to be "broken" in some way. I tried using the file menu-default.tar.gz for the menus, and installing it with the puppy installer (dotpup installer/install_alien_pkg) but it throws it out, saying the file is corrupt. Decompressing manually and extracting into the directory in the .gz file seems to have no effect at all. The file is not corrupt, I have no problems decompressing it manually; I have also run xfce4 using "xwin xfce4".

The problem is the menu remains the same as with puppy's default manager, and there are no submenu icons.

Thanks,

ljones

[MU]

Rarsa wrote a menu-converter, you find it in this thread:
http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.p ... e&start=16

Mark

[ljones]

Thanks for that .... oddly though the problem seems to have been in the sequence that I was doing things. That, and the fact that it was nearly 1AM at night x.x . My mistake.

But I did manage to do one thing - and that is install puppy and xfce4 onto an old PC (A dell optiplex 166Mhz) successfully. It was nearby to the PC I'm using now, so I decided to write down just how I did things. Here's the end result;

(I Must write this out better!).

Installing puppy with XFCE4 with no other os; 1.0.7 <--- puppy cd image!

Note: The only thing I've left out is doing stuff like mounting drives and
opening up rox. I don't know where you will have the neccecary files.


This hasn't been tried with any other version other than 1.0.7.

you will need the following files to do this;

* puppy-1.0.7-mozilla.iso ( http://ftp.nluug.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/di ... ozilla.iso )
* 1243xfce.pup ( http://www.yourfilehost.com/media.php?c ... 43xfce.pup )
* xinitrc.pup ( http://www.murga.org/~puppy/download.php?id=1094 )
* menu-default.tar.gz ( http://www.murga.org/~puppy/download.php?id=1099 )
* sbminst ( http://btmgr.webframe.org/index.php3?body=download.html )

0. Clear the hard drive totally. This can be done with a freedos bootdisk.
1. Make a bootdisk with sbminst
2. Boot off the floppy disk, boot off the CD.
3. Choose 3, just type return for "hda1". <--- puppy menu.
4. Let puppy load, and use linux's fdisk in the gui in a command line window.
5. Make 2 partitions, and format with mke2fs /dev/hda1 & mke2fs /dev/hda2
6. Restart with puppy's start button.
7. With the bootdisk made in [2] leave it in the floppy drive, boot off it.
8. Boot off the CD.
9. Let puppy boot and choose 3 off the puppy menu.
10. Puppy will load, where it says about "hda1", type hda2.
11. When asked about "pup002", just press return.
12. Let puppy boot, and choose setup from the puppy menu,choose "install hard drive".
13. Choose (2) to give puppy his own hard drive partition.
14. Press enter (yes it's a new installation).
15. When asked about the partition, choose /dev/hda1 <--- type it . Then type y .
16. (make sure the puppy cd is still in the drive, don't remove it).
17. Press enter. (At somepoint the cd will eject itself, or mine did, leave the cd in the drive).
18. This is now step 4,make a bootdisk. It's up to you, but I typed N and pressed return not to.
19. Puppy is now copying files onto the hard drive. On an old 166Mhz PC, it takes a while.
20. We are now on "step 7", install grub. If this is an empty hard drive best to say Y and press return to install it, otherwise type return.
21. A Window will pop up called GRUBCONFIG (lots of these!).
22. Choose "simple" and click ok.
23. Choose "standard" and click ok.
24. The cd will be taken back in (if you have a laptop you might need to push it back in!).
25. You'll be asked where the grub files need to go, use /dev/hda1 . Type /dev/hda1 (it's probably already there) choose ok.
26. You'll see a message "working..". Click ok.
27. Now you'll see the destination for grub, and have a choice of root, floppy and MBR. Choose MBR and click OK.
28. You'll see a message saying it's creating /boot/grub..., just click ok.
29. There will be a few seconds pause, and a dialoge box will appear saying "Installing the grub bootloader". Click ok.
30. *Hopefully* grub will be installed ok, if it has you'll see a dialogue saying "GRUB was successfully on the MBR...". Click ok.
31. Reboot the computer with the puppy start button.
32. Take out the boot floppy and puppy cd!
33. Let the computer boot off hard drive. When you see the blue and white grub v 0.96 menu on the screen, choose "Linux on /dev/hda1", choose it and press return.
34. Puppy will now boot off the hard drive.
35. On my PC, x windows didn't start at this point. If you find yourself at a command line with red text telling you to run "xwin", do this. Type xwin .
36. Puppy should be back again, looking just like it did off the cd.
37. Install the file "1243xfce.pup" from whereever it is stored. Click on it once to do so.
38. A popup appears, (dotpup). Choose unzip the pup file. You should also see something like "1243xfce.pup file integrity OK".
39. A new popup appears, again "dotpup". Choose run the installer.
40. XFCE4 is now installing. On older computers like the 166Mhz PC I am using it can take a while, so you might need to wait.
41. You should see a popup called "Info" saying that installation has finished. Click on "ok".
42. Dotpup popup returns, asking if you want to delete the dotpup. It is up to you, however I chose "no".
43. Restart computer with puppy menu.
44. Allow puppy to load. Make sure the boot floppy and the puppy cd aren't in the drive. You need to boot off hard drive.
45. Again let grub from the hard drive as we did earlier, and choose linux on /dev/hda1.
46. Puppy should boot up as normal this time with X windows. On a slow computer this might take a little while.
47. We now need to install xinirc.pup. Again, as before find the file (whereever it is located) and click on it once.
48. Dotpup appears, it should say that the file integrity is OK. Choose "unzip the pup file".
49. When the dotpup window changes choose "run the installer".
50. You'll get a message from xdialog saying that /root/.xinitrc already exists. Click OK to overwrite it.
51. You should now see a popup saying "finished installation". Click OK.
52. There will be a brief pause, and you'll be asked if you want to delete the dotpup file. It's up to you, however I chose "No".
53. Restart the computer.
54. Make sure the boot floppy and puppy cd aren't in the drive.
55. The computer should now boot again, when grub (the blue and white text) appears, choose "linux on /dev/hda1".
56. Puppy should now boot again, as normal and looking just as it did from the CD.
57. We now need to install the new menus, click once on file "menu-default.tar.gz".
58. A program called Xarchive will appear. You'll see a window with buttons at the top, and a little way down a list of files, like root/ , root/. config and soforth. Click on this (just next to /root). [001]
59. There are 4 menus in Xarchive called "file, selection, archive, help". Choose "archive".
60. A list will drop down, choose extract.
61. A popup will appear asking you where to extract the files to (which directory). Delete whatever it says and just type "/" without the quotes.
62. Xarchive should now say it's extracting files, and when finished it should say "Done extracting files to /". [002]
63. Click ok.
64. Close xarchive.
65. We now need to stop X running. Press Ctrl, alt and backspace together. The backspace key is at the top right (not on the numeric keypad!).
66. You'll be back at a command line, with a message about "busybox" and a # prompt.
67. Type xwin xfce4, press return.
68. XFCE4 takes a while to load, so you might have to wait for a moment.
69. XFCE is now installed, complete with icons in the submenus (no missing icons!).
70. The end. Now configure XFCE4 as you want !

Notes: (this isn't necceary, just a verification)
[001] file menu.xml in /root/.config/xfce4/desktop is 12.9k
[002] file menu.xmk in /root/.config/xfce4/desktop is now 17.5k

You can check if the menu file has been installed properly. The old menu file is 12.9k, the new XFCE4 one is 17.5k. Just above, where you see [001] in brackets (step 58), at the same time open a command line window and type;

cd /root/.confog/xfce4/desktop
ls -lah menu.xml

You should see that at step 58, it is 12.9k, but after you have completed step (62), type the above again and it should now be 17.5k

XFCE4 Tip: To not display the taskbar, choose the XFCE4 settings (looks like a little spanner), then choose the taskbar icon. Next, set the position to "bottom", the height and width to small and choose auto hide taskbar. Close the window and the previous window. No taskbar!

Hopefully that'll work for others too -- the only things I've left out is how to mount and unmount drives, and using rox.



ljones

[ljones]

Here's a screengrab of the end result (scaled down from 1024x768); you can get the wallpaper from here
ljones

[saintlangton]

Liking the wallpaper lots - just needs a little trimming as there are white bits along the top and right side.

How about entering it into the wallpaper contest?
http://www.murga.org/%7Epuppy/viewtopic ... 5&start=16

Chris