Booting multiple Puppies [SOLVED]

[Dougal]

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 7891#87891

[ecomoney]

Dougal you are a star! This means that the teenagers can have their AMSN and their flash 9 games and the kids can have their supertux and their gCompris!!!

I will forward this on to Slapshot (lead developer of Edupup) to have it included.

Would be great to have this as part of Puppy proper as a powerful new feature in very little space, I hope Barry takes it onboard. Theoretically this means that it will be possible to create multi boot puppy disks with several versions? No longer will most of my CD's be empty!!!

Many thanks

Ecomoney

[Sit Heel Speak]

(deleted by poster)

[Sit Heel Speak]

(deleted by poster)

[ecomoney]

Have just edited my grub config on the testing machine to:-

Code: Select all

# Start GRUB global section
timeout 10
color light-gray/blue black/light-gray
# End GRUB global section
# Linux bootable partition config begins
  title Office
  root (hd0,0)
  kernel (hd0,0)/boot/PuppyOffice/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 PHOME=hda1 PMEDIA=idehd PUPSFS=(hd0,0)/boot/PuppyOffice/pup_202.sfs PFILE=(hd0,0)/boot/PuppyOffice-none-262144
  initrd (hd0,0)/boot/PuppyOffice/initrd.gz 
  title Edupup
  root (hd0,0)
  kernel (hd0,0)/boot/Edupup/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 PHOME=hda1 PMEDIA=idehd PUPSFS=(hd0,0)/boot/PuppyOffice/pup_202.sfs PFILE=(hd0,0)/boot/PuppyOffice-none-262144
  initrd (hd0,0)/boot/PuppyOffice/initrd.gz 
# Linux bootable partition config ends

Using the default grub in puppy, and got the same set of errors as previously. thank you S.H.S. for taking the trouble to post this as it would certainly have supplied a useable workaround. It seems that the people over at GRUB HQ have already fixed this with a later grub release than the one included in puppy, so it has been requested elsewhere. Perhaps its time to update GRUB in puppy too?

Slapshot, who I asked to work on this problem has already seen this post and the one from Dougal, and has used it to remaster BETA initgz to look for edu_save.3fs instead of pup_save.3fs in edupup. This means that it can be run entirely seperately from any already puppied computer whether booted by grub or by cd. Who said Linux and open source is difficult to support in real world environments? (just a certain Mr Jobs methinks hehe).

[Sit Heel Speak]

(dbp)

[ecomoney]

Just to let everyone know, Slapshot (Edupups Lead programmer) has created an initrg.gz to boot an edu_save.3fs file instead of a pup_save according to Dougals instructions. this means that we can create a setup that boots multiple puppies easily.

At the centre we are currently recycling a larch batch of ex school pc's. Basically our hardware guy boots them and formats the disk to linux format with a small swap partition, then installs grub. This makes for a reasonable hardware test.

After this has been done, we ftp a zip file (containing a all the _save files and pup_2xx.sfs files, open office .sfs etc) and a new /boot directory. We simply unzip it to the hard disk, reboot and run xorgwizard for both distros from a grub menu.

Result? TWO complete operating systems installed in under 15 minutes on a 100mb network on pentium 600's with 128mb!!! Just done six today - Go puppy!!!

If anyone would like a copy of this zip file PM me.

[ecomoney]

Thanks to Dougals instructions and Slapshots (lead developer of Edupuppy), weve got the pc's at the cybercafe all dual booting Edupuppy and 2.02. Weve also been putting the dual boot system on the low-cost pc's that the centre is selling to raise money for the Wireless Commuity LAN. Its a textbook case of how someones techical expertise can feed back into real world results.

Heres the final grub.conf

Code: Select all

# GRUB configuration file '/boot/grub/menu.lst'.
# generated by 'grubconfig'.  Fri Dec 29 02:21:56 2006
#
# The backup copy of the MBR for drive '/dev/hda' is
# here '/boot/grub/mbr.hda.24432'.  You can restore it like this.
# dd if=/boot/grub/mbr.hda.24432 of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1
#
# Start GRUB global section
timeout 10
color black/cyan yellow/cyan 
# End GRUB global section
# Linux bootable partition config begins
  title Puppy Linux 2.02
  root (hd0,0)
  kernel /boot/puppy202/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0
  initrd /boot/puppy202/initrd.gz 
# Linux bootable partition config ends
# Linux bootable partition config begins
  title Edupup 1.1
  root (hd0,0)
  kernel /boot/edupup11/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0
  initrd /boot/edupup11/initrd.gz 
# Linux bootable partition config ends

There would be one other option I would like to add an option to boot into memory from the GRUB menu, so things like a backing up, system restore or a refresh from ftp on another machine could be carried out. Would this mean different boot parameters?

Many thanks for your help.