The new ISObooter project removes this limitation. It can boot most Linuxes and all recent Puppies.
Update: See Page 12 for a better way to keep your save file/folder on the flash drive.
Update: See Page 9 for a way to create ISObooter flash drives from Windows. Read the instructions on Page 5 for making an ISObooter flash drive from another Linux.
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ISObooter is a procedure for booting many Linuxes, including Puppy, directly from their ISO files. It is based on Scooby's work here.
1. Run Gparted and format your USB drive as FAT32. This is essential to ensure that the ISO files are contiguous.
2. Set the "Boot" flag on the FAT32 partition.
3. If you have a large drive, you may want to make two or three partitions to organize your ISOs. But do NOT make a fourth partition! It is used by the ISObooter system. Also, read here.
4. Download the attachment isobooter.tar.gz and extract it. It contains a single clickable script named isobooter.
5. Copy this file onto your USB drive.
6. Click the isobooter icon. You will be asked the question
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Do you want to make Drive sdx bootable? [y/n]7. Add some ISO files to your drive. You can copy them from other locations or download them directly from the web.
Hint: After putting an ISO on the drive, open a terminal window and type: sync. This helps to prevent fragmentation.
8. When done, click the isobooter icon again. Answer "n" to the first question.
9. The next question is
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Choose a partition for Puppy savefiles [1,2,3]10. You have two choices for setting up each ISO.
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Do you want to boot xxx.iso from its splash screen? [y/n]b. For a Puppy, answering "n" will make it boot like a frugal install. This is the preferred choice.
Hint: If you answer "y" or "n", the ISO files are processed individually. If you use "Y" or "N", all subsequent files are automatically processed the same way.
11. Finally, ISObooter checks the collection of ISO files for fragmentation and reports if any of them are unbootable.
12. You're done! Check out the new menu.lst file. Then boot off the USB drive.
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If you are storing ISOs in several partitions, run ISObooter in each one.
There are two ways to make a second partition bootable.
a. Move the file grldr into it. Grub4Dos will boot the partition containing this file.
b. In your main partition, open its menu.lst in a text editor. Note the final entry.
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title More ISOs (see the instructions)
configfile (hd0,x)/menu.lst
commandline-----------------------------------
Having a spare FAT32 partition on your USB drive can be handy. If the ISO files in your main partition become dis-contiguous, just copy them to the spare partition. Make it bootable. Then re-format the first partition.
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ISObooter will boot many non-Puppy ISO's such as Ubuntu. But if you want persistent storage, there is some extra setup.
1. Make a separate ext4 partition on the flash drive.
2. Using Gparted's "Label" feature, name the partition "casper-rw".
3. Do your ISObooter setup and edit the menu.lst.
4. Modify the Ubuntu entry as follows, inserting the appropriate ISO filename:
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title Ubuntu 10.10 Desktop ISO
find --set-root /ubuntu.iso
map /ubuntu.iso (0xff)
map --hook
root (0xff)
kernel /casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/ubuntu.iso noeject noprompt splash persistent --
initrd /casper/initrd.lz
