Method to install puppy 2.13 as sole operating system

[shiningwizard]

This is my personal experience and like to share with newbs like me. I'm rather new to installing linux, though been doing so for windows since 9x.

I was trying to install puppy to an old laptop (AMD Duron 1Ghz with 112MB ram). Decided to wipe out the old windows xp (yea, it installs and runs, but you can take a coffee break while waiting for it to load internet explorer)

anyway the steps are rather outdated from the sources i garnered. cause me several hours of confusion. i'm listing the exact steps that worked for me.

credits to the sources, esp to http://puppylinux.org/wikka/HardDiskInstall

0. download and burn puppy 2.13 to cd (known as live cd)
1. pop live cd into target machine's cd-rom. make sure that the cd-rom is bootable (check bios settings if necessary).
2. at prompt "boot: " either wait or press enter.
3. select keyboard="us", video="xvesa" (or xorg). it doesn't matter at this stage.
4. after less than a minute, you should be in puppy gui now. if using xvesa, select the proper resolution if you want. doesn't matter either way.
5. click start->utilities->Pdisk.
6. click "hda" (assuming that's the harddisk you're installing to)
7. click cfdisk. *note: partitioning removes all data!*
8. DELETE all the partitions you can see. simple cursor keys do the trick.
9. after deleting all the partitions, select "Write partitions".
10. select "quit".
11. click start->utilities->Gparted
12. you should see the harddisk as all unallocated partition now. click on the partition.
13. click the "New" button. enter the size of the partition you want to use, leaving some space for the linux swap file. personally, i used ext3 as my file system. this is "hda1".
14. click on unallocated space again and followed by "New". now set the size to twice your ram. file system MUST BE linux-swap.
15. click "Apply" button. if you can't see it (like i initially did due to the large icons), go through the menu on top and find "Apply".
16. follow instructions to start the partitioning.
17. IMPORTANT STEP! REBOOT! the online sources never said this step and caused fail installations. select DON'T save changes when asked.
18. after reboot, you should come back to the boot prompt again. press enter and repeat steps 3 and 4. *** DON'T REMOVE CD ***
19. click start->system->puppy universal installer
*** steps 20 to 24 may be not be in the proper order. the general guise is just to follow the installation gui. go to the credit link for more information ***
20. choose the NORMAL install (i.e. option-2 as said in other sources).
21. click "install to hda1".
22. after some time, GRUB installation will come up. select "simple" and wait for grub to say installation successful. make sure to select "MBR" when there's the choice.
23. cd-rom should have popped open by now. remove cd now. REBOOT!
24. grub should come up. select install grub to linux partition. things should all work fine up to now.
25. select first option, i.e. boot into linux. *note: if you receive an error starting wrong vga resolution like i did, ignore it and just press space*
26. click Home on the desktop. click parent directory->boot->grub->menu.lst. click on the eye to view hidden files if necessary.
27. Open the menu.lst file.
28. remove # from the timeout line. set time limit to whatever you want. i set mine to 0, so it boots immediately into puppy without pause.
29. make sure this line "kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda2 ro vga=normal" has "vga=normal". if it's vga=790, it causes the error in step 25.
30. save and exit. now REBOOT and test out your installation. it should work just fine!

[r3bol]

14. click on unallocated space again and followed by "New". now set the size to twice your ram. file system MUST BE linux-swap.

Should the linux-swap be primary or extended?

[marc66thomas]

anyway the steps are rather outdated from the sources i garnered. cause me several hours of confusion. I'm listing the exact steps that worked for me.

credits to the sources, esp to http://puppylinux.org/wikka/HardDiskInstall

In the wiki you can make additions and changes to make it accurate.

I have added to the same page myself after running into a couple of walls myself. Thanks for the post. I'm reviewing your experience closely since I spent a number of hours myself hunting for solutions.

[pmshah]

14. click on unallocated space again and followed by "New". now set the size to twice your ram. file system MUST BE linux-swap.

Should the linux-swap be primary or extended?

Can be either. Must be visible and NOT hidden.

Better to have extended since these are not hiden by default at boot time under any OS.

[r3bol]

Thanks. Everything went well (I think ).
I was wondering - because puppy is my only OS, do I need grub? Isn't grub for when you are managing more than one OS?
If I do need it, is there any way i can skip or timeout the grub (what do you want to do) screen?

[CatmanDru]

At which point (step number) is formating of swap partition done?

I placed it at "19a. Format the swap partition as file system linux swap, type 82. See other sources for details."

I made a Wiki page: http://puppylinux.org/wikka/HDDInstallChecklist

It's definitely NOT pretty, but it's there.

Please feel free to add, modify, correct, improve it and add links. However, please keep it in the form of a checklist.

Catmandru

[amish]

grub is a bootloader... every operating system must have a bootloader of some kind, dos has one, windows has one, linux lets you use loadlin, lilo (linux loader), or grub. there may be others, with names that sound more "odd..."

grub lends itself well to booting more than one distro / os, but that's not the only reason to use it. i use it because it comes with jady's pupwin98, which is puppy 1.07, but i am also using it with 2.11.

i've since set the timeout to "timeout 4" in menu.lst, but putting that at the top. what you want to put at the top is:

timeout 0

then it will automatically go to the first (or only) config in menu.lst... if you have more, there are ways to change which one it goes to, other than listing the default one first.