Hello,
I have an old laptop, (intel centrino 1.8Mhz, 2GB Ram) I removed XP from it and installed Xubuntu to it since it is the lightest version of Ubuntu. But Xubuntu as well is at times very slow.
So I decided to install Puppy Linux which will be hopefully faster than Xubuntu.
The thing is I want to keep Xubuntu as an option and want to do a FULL install of puppy to another partition. I could find guides for installing it with windows but not with ubuntu.
I found this http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Grub2 and this http://puppylinux.org/wikka/InstallationFullHDD but I'm still not confident about going ahead with the install as I don't want to lose my current Xubuntu installation.
Here is what I understand so far:
Download the iso image from here: http://bkhome.org/news/?viewDetailed=00097 (While installing Xubuntu on this laptop I had to use the --forcePAE tag. So for puppy which version should I download? PAE or noPAE? )
-Use GParted to create a separate partition for puppylinux (should it be ext4? or ext3? and should I make it bootable?)
- burn the iso to a usb using unetbootin.
-boot from USB and click on Menu > System > Puppy Universal Installer.
Now here is where I am lost. I know that at this stage I am to edit the GRUB file, but how I don't know.
Can anyone please tell me if what I understand so far is correct? and help me out with my questions please.
Many thanks
Full install of Puppy Linux alongside Ubuntu
-
Mike Walsh
- Posts: 6351
- Joined: Sat 28 Jun 2014, 12:42
- Location: King's Lynn, UK.
Your understanding so far is quite correct. I would go for ext3 when you partition/format with gParted; this is a good choice for Puppy. Ext3 and Ext4 are 'journalling' filesystems, and can recover from quite serious errors. Ext2 doesn't have the journalling feature, and is best used for flash drive installs; Puppy minimises the writes to a flash drive, as this helps to prolong the lifespan of your USB.
No need to edit the Grub file at all.
Once you've installed Puppy, look in Menu>System>Grub4DOS bootloader config. Many of us use Grub4DOS, as it just simply works.....and will pick up virtually all installed OS's; I have yet to find one with which it won't work. Click on this.
It will scan your system, and ask you which of your drives you want to install GRUB to. I should choose sda, your primary drive; I assume this is where your Xubuntu install is.
It will then scan for installed systems, and should pick up both Puppy, and Xubuntu. At this point, you can rename the entries if you want to, as these are what will appear in the GRUB menu at boot time. It shows an entry for Windows, but ignore this.....it's a standard part of the bootloader, and won't hurt anything.
The next window will ask whether you now want to install Grub. At this point, you can click 'Yes', and Grub will be written to the MBR (Master Boot Record) at the very beginning of the drive. You will then be given the option to edit the 'Menu.lst' if you want to. (That's a small 'L', not a 1.....short for Menu Listing). Or just click on 'Quit'; Grub4DOS doesn't often get it wrong.
GRUB is now installed. If you reboot, you should be presented with the Grub4DOS bootloader menu (in a rather fetching blue/black/white colour combination!).....with entries for both Xubuntu, and your chosen Puppy. Choose which you want, and.....enjoy.
It sounds as though you need the 'no PAE' option, but you had better give us your exact laptop specs, as the 'Centrino' platform is the name for a combination of CPU, wireless card and chipset.....but covers quite a few different CPUs, and several different years. You may have one of the rather few Intel CPUs that possess the PAE capabilty, but which don't have the 'flag' set for it.
Specs, please; in particular, the year of manufacture. This will help to pin down which Centrino chipset/combo you actually have.
BTW: Xubuntu is not the lightest of the 'buntu family; that honour goes to Lubuntu, which uses the LXDE desktop. It's rather plain by default.....but I have made it look very pretty in the past, Stick with the current version of 14.04, which is the LTS (Long Term Support) version, and is far more stable. You can change Puppies and 'buntus as often as you like; but as long as you have a a Puppy installed on your machine, just re-run Grub4DOS each time you do, and it will re-write the 'Menu.lst' for the installed systems.
Hope that helps.
Regards,
Mike.
No need to edit the Grub file at all.
Once you've installed Puppy, look in Menu>System>Grub4DOS bootloader config. Many of us use Grub4DOS, as it just simply works.....and will pick up virtually all installed OS's; I have yet to find one with which it won't work. Click on this.
It will scan your system, and ask you which of your drives you want to install GRUB to. I should choose sda, your primary drive; I assume this is where your Xubuntu install is.
It will then scan for installed systems, and should pick up both Puppy, and Xubuntu. At this point, you can rename the entries if you want to, as these are what will appear in the GRUB menu at boot time. It shows an entry for Windows, but ignore this.....it's a standard part of the bootloader, and won't hurt anything.
The next window will ask whether you now want to install Grub. At this point, you can click 'Yes', and Grub will be written to the MBR (Master Boot Record) at the very beginning of the drive. You will then be given the option to edit the 'Menu.lst' if you want to. (That's a small 'L', not a 1.....short for Menu Listing). Or just click on 'Quit'; Grub4DOS doesn't often get it wrong.
GRUB is now installed. If you reboot, you should be presented with the Grub4DOS bootloader menu (in a rather fetching blue/black/white colour combination!).....with entries for both Xubuntu, and your chosen Puppy. Choose which you want, and.....enjoy.
It sounds as though you need the 'no PAE' option, but you had better give us your exact laptop specs, as the 'Centrino' platform is the name for a combination of CPU, wireless card and chipset.....but covers quite a few different CPUs, and several different years. You may have one of the rather few Intel CPUs that possess the PAE capabilty, but which don't have the 'flag' set for it.
Specs, please; in particular, the year of manufacture. This will help to pin down which Centrino chipset/combo you actually have.
BTW: Xubuntu is not the lightest of the 'buntu family; that honour goes to Lubuntu, which uses the LXDE desktop. It's rather plain by default.....but I have made it look very pretty in the past, Stick with the current version of 14.04, which is the LTS (Long Term Support) version, and is far more stable. You can change Puppies and 'buntus as often as you like; but as long as you have a a Puppy installed on your machine, just re-run Grub4DOS each time you do, and it will re-write the 'Menu.lst' for the installed systems.
Hope that helps.
Regards,
Mike.
With 2GB of ram the noPAE will work fine.So for puppy which version should I download? PAE or noPAE? )
In fact, it may work better.
PAE is really only needed if you have 4GB or more of memory.
When you do make a partition for Puppy.
Best advice do changes starting at the end of the hard drive.
Guide for using Gparted to re-size partition without loosing data.
http://www.howtoforge.com/partitioning_with_gparted
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected
YaPI(any iso installer)
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected
YaPI(any iso installer)
Thanks a lot for the detailed reply guys.
I'll try this tonight and let you guys know how I progressed.
What exactly is the benefit of starting the partition at the end or beginning? I always start at the beginning without giving it a second thought.
Also here is the output of hardware-info about my processor in regards to PAE or noPAE. Thanks
I'll try this tonight and let you guys know how I progressed.
What exactly is the benefit of starting the partition at the end or beginning? I always start at the beginning without giving it a second thought.
Also here is the output of hardware-info about my processor in regards to PAE or noPAE. Thanks
Code: Select all
-Processor-
Name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.80GHz
Family, model, stepping : 6, 13, 6 (Pentium III/Pentium III Xeon/Celeron)
Vendor : Intel
-Configuration-
Cache Size : 2048kb
Frequency : 1800.00MHz
BogoMIPS : 3590.92
Byte Order : Little Endian
-Features-
FDIV Bug : no
HLT Bug : no
F00F Bug : no
Coma Bug : no
Has FPU : yes
-Cache-
Cache information not available
-Capabilities-
fpu : Floating Point Unit
vme : Virtual 86 Mode Extension
de : Debug Extensions - I/O breakpoints
pse : Page Size Extensions (4MB pages)
tsc : Time Stamp Counter and RDTSC instruction
msr : Model Specific Registers
pae : Physical Address Extensions
mce : Machine Check Architeture
cx8 : CMPXCHG8 instruction
sep : Fast System Call (SYSENTER/SYSEXIT)
mtrr : Memory Type Range Registers
pge : Page Global Enable
mca : Machine Check Architecture
cmov : Conditional Move instruction
clflush : Cache Line Flush instruction
dts : Debug Store
acpi : Thermal Monitor and Software Controlled Clock
mmx : MMX technology
fxsr : FXSAVE and FXRSTOR instructions
sse : SSE instructions
sse2 : SSE2 (WNI) instructions
ss : Self Snoop
tm : Thermal Monitor
pbe : Pending Break Enable
bts : Branch Trace Store
est : Enhanced SpeedStep
tm2 : Thermal Monitor 2
-
Mike Walsh
- Posts: 6351
- Joined: Sat 28 Jun 2014, 12:42
- Location: King's Lynn, UK.
Hi, farazk86.
Okay. Well, from the look of things, you have a 'Dothan' platform Pentium M; this one. The '2048MB cache' (2 GB) tells me that. Your processor does have PAE enabled:-
In fact, as bigpup mentions, the 'PAE/noPAE' limitation really only applies if you have more than 4 GB of memory. With 2 GB RAM, you would be just as well off using the 'no PAE' download for whatever Puppy you decide to use, although in theory, you should be able to use either.
If you have, say, 6 (or 8 ) GB RAM, the 'no PAE' version will only be able to address something like 3.5 GB of that RAM.....meaning that you have memory sitting there that is simply inaccessible (which is pointless). PAE simply allows the machine/OS to access every bit of RAM that you have.
So unless you intend (in fact, if you're even able) to install more RAM at a later date, you may as well go with the 'noPAE' version. It will serve you well, with no trouble at all.
Mike.
Okay. Well, from the look of things, you have a 'Dothan' platform Pentium M; this one. The '2048MB cache' (2 GB) tells me that. Your processor does have PAE enabled:-
Code: Select all
.....pae : Physical Address Extensions .....If you have, say, 6 (or 8 ) GB RAM, the 'no PAE' version will only be able to address something like 3.5 GB of that RAM.....meaning that you have memory sitting there that is simply inaccessible (which is pointless). PAE simply allows the machine/OS to access every bit of RAM that you have.
So unless you intend (in fact, if you're even able) to install more RAM at a later date, you may as well go with the 'noPAE' version. It will serve you well, with no trouble at all.
Mike.
A unpartitioned device you should start partitioning from the front and go towards the end. ------>What exactly is the benefit of starting the partition at the end
When re-sizing partitions, go from end to beginning of partition <----------------
(data you want saved will be in the beginning of the partition)
Notice the partition numbering and the partition table info.
Also, less chance of a patch of unusable unallocated space between two partitions.
Any unallocated space will always be at the end.
- Attachments
-
- capture17283.png
- (87.86 KiB) Downloaded 394 times
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected
YaPI(any iso installer)
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected
YaPI(any iso installer)
I am a new Linux user and took days to look everything up and solve problems with my installations.
I have an old Acer computer with XP, I eventually dual booted with Fedora 22 workstation and now XP-Fedora 22- slacko5.7 puppy Linux. Puppy Linux with a hard disk install or on USB is the fastest.
I used no_PAE.
With an old computer, I would install Xubuntu or whatever Linux first, no_PAE
http://puppylinux.org/main/How%20NOT%20 ... 0Puppy.htm
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/ ... ootloader/
In my bad memory, I remember a problem with sector size on the puppy partition on the hard drive - if I remember, the partition manager made 4096 sector size instead of 512 and I had a kernel panic and had to start over to change the sector size.
USB boot puppy with your USB flash drive.
I did a frugal install to the partition I had made for puppy. My puppy save file is to a file in the slacko5.7frugal folder. After you install, save the NEWGRUBTEXT file (generated automatically) somewhere where you can access it from your Xubuntu or other Linux
After exiting from your installation and powering down, boot up your Xubuntu and add puppy to your boot manager.
I am using grub2. Refer to this http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=45961 davesurrey's post (scroll down to the post) on how to add puppy Linux to the boot menu with grub2. Due to file permissions, I had to use terminal, sudo, copy 40_custom to a new place, change permissions and then rename 40_custom, sudo editor edit the template, copy my file to /etc/grub.d, chmod +x my file (all following the above noted post).
My file entries would look something like
(copied from one of the links), only note the line set root=(hd0,4) has no quote marks anywhere. (The same link shows you how to look up the partition uuid if you put that line in there, which I did.)
Updated grub.cfg with
Rebooted and all works.
The two problem area for me were the partition sector size problem and then learning how to properly work with grub2.
Edit: (Just use whatever bootloader your Xubuntu intall uses, and edit it in Xubuntu.)
I have an old Acer computer with XP, I eventually dual booted with Fedora 22 workstation and now XP-Fedora 22- slacko5.7 puppy Linux. Puppy Linux with a hard disk install or on USB is the fastest.
I used no_PAE.
With an old computer, I would install Xubuntu or whatever Linux first, no_PAE
http://puppylinux.org/main/How%20NOT%20 ... 0Puppy.htm
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/ ... ootloader/
In my bad memory, I remember a problem with sector size on the puppy partition on the hard drive - if I remember, the partition manager made 4096 sector size instead of 512 and I had a kernel panic and had to start over to change the sector size.
USB boot puppy with your USB flash drive.
I did a frugal install to the partition I had made for puppy. My puppy save file is to a file in the slacko5.7frugal folder. After you install, save the NEWGRUBTEXT file (generated automatically) somewhere where you can access it from your Xubuntu or other Linux
After exiting from your installation and powering down, boot up your Xubuntu and add puppy to your boot manager.
I am using grub2. Refer to this http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=45961 davesurrey's post (scroll down to the post) on how to add puppy Linux to the boot menu with grub2. Due to file permissions, I had to use terminal, sudo, copy 40_custom to a new place, change permissions and then rename 40_custom, sudo editor edit the template, copy my file to /etc/grub.d, chmod +x my file (all following the above noted post).
My file entries would look something like
Code: Select all
menuentry 'Tahr Puppy 6.0' {
set root=(hd0,4)
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 3ffc6bc0-4379-4449-bbdf-4ae47c1cfdb5
linux /tahr6.0frugal/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd psubdir=tahr6.0frugal
initrd /tahr6.0frugal/initrd.gzUpdated grub.cfg with
Code: Select all
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg. The two problem area for me were the partition sector size problem and then learning how to properly work with grub2.
Edit: (Just use whatever bootloader your Xubuntu intall uses, and edit it in Xubuntu.)
-
Mike Walsh
- Posts: 6351
- Joined: Sat 28 Jun 2014, 12:42
- Location: King's Lynn, UK.
Honestly, it's a lot quicker & easier to use Grub4DOS from Puppy; it will find all your other Linux distros with no trouble at all.
In my opinion, having used it for several months in Ubuntu, GRUB2 is for masochists (that is, people who enjoy doing things the awkward, 'traditional' way)..!
It's too much like hard work. I want to use my system; not spend all my time farting about with it, just so's I can say to people, 'Oh look; I'm a real geek...' Tchah.
Remember, you can use the bootloader program from any of your installed distros, as long as it's installed to the MBR of the main hard drive. You don't have to use Xubuntu's, just because it happens to be the first one on the disk.....
Only my 'take' on things. I'm all for an easy life.....and Grub4DOS is definitely easier to use.
Mike.
In my opinion, having used it for several months in Ubuntu, GRUB2 is for masochists (that is, people who enjoy doing things the awkward, 'traditional' way)..!
It's too much like hard work. I want to use my system; not spend all my time farting about with it, just so's I can say to people, 'Oh look; I'm a real geek...' Tchah.Remember, you can use the bootloader program from any of your installed distros, as long as it's installed to the MBR of the main hard drive. You don't have to use Xubuntu's, just because it happens to be the first one on the disk.....
Only my 'take' on things. I'm all for an easy life.....and Grub4DOS is definitely easier to use.
Mike.