Frugal-Installer's Boot Module
I discovered that I couldn't use Grub4dos.
I had many Puppys and associated files on partition on a 3.5 inch hard-drive. But I had to replace my computer and, discovering that it would be physically difficult install the old drive to the new computer, had to copy the files from the old hard-drive to the new one. Although the new computer wasn’t UEFI and I might have been able to install Grub4dos to the hard-drive, I prefer not overwriting a functional hard-drive’s boot-loader, using instead a dedicated USB-Key as a bootloader. Plug in the Key, boot Puppys. Power on without the Key plugged in boot Windows & or ‘Major Linux Distro’. Moreover, for some unknown reason although I could install grub4dos to a USB-Key, it wasn't able to create a boot-loader which would find my Puppys. Installing grub4dos to the hard-drive was counter-indicated.
To obtain a boot-loader on a USB-Key with a listing of your Puppies on A/one hard-drive/partition:
(a) use frugalpup-installer: latest version –if you don’t already have THAT VERSION-- can be obtained here, http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 3160f73755
(b) Plug in your PREVIOUSLY PREPARED USB-Key. See Screenshot. Read what it says next to the Boot button: “Use this facility to setup OR update the boot configuration files on a fat32 partition.” Important ‘interpretation’. The ‘partition’ can be a USB-Key. It must already be formatted as fat32 as this module does not provide a method to format while it is running.
- FrugalPup GUI.png (162.51 KiB) Viewed 978 times
( c) Start the frugralpup application and click the “Boot” button. See screenshot.
(d) Select the partition on which your frugal Puppys are located. [The instructions which appear explain that you can either select the partition, itself, or a folder: the latter only creating a boot-listing of the Puppy located in that folder. Clicking OK will create a listing of all Puppys on that partition. I clicked OK.
(e) Select your USB-Key as the location to write the boot-loader. Wait for the application to finish writing.
(f) Optional-Recommended: When the application has finished open grub.cfg in a text editor and change each reference of atahd to read ataflash. See the discussion here, https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic. ... 4917#p2235. You'll find grub.cfg at the root/top of the USB-Key.
Limitation: (1) frugal-installer writes the delay before booting the first listed Puppy as “set timeout=5”, that is only 5 seconds: unnecessary if you only have one listing, too short if you have several and need a moment to decide which. See limitation (2)
Limitation: (2) AFAIK, each listing is derived from the name of the Puppy_version_Number.sfs: that is, it does not take into consideration either the name you gave that Puppy's folder or the name you gave its SaveFile/Folder. [I often have two 'versions' while testing kernels or incompatible/questionable applications]. For example, with two version of Xenialpup64, you'll have two listing each displaying “Puppy xenialpup64 7.5”. Opening grub.cfg in a test editor will reveal the folder which grub used for each respective listing: e.g. linux /xen64x/vmlinuz... You can edit the title of a listing to provide an easy way to distinguish among multiple versions: e.g. menuentry "Puppy xenialpup64 7.5 Xen64x" {
Edit-030321: After writing this post I tested. Like grub4dos, Grub boot-loader will start copying the Puppy system files into RAM, then display a menu of the SaveFiles and wait for you make a choice.
Limitation: (3) frugal-installer’s ‘Boot’ module only examines the one partition you select. If you also have Puppys on a different partition it will not create a listing of them. POSSIBLE WORK-AROUND UNTESTED but should work as grub.cfg can be copied: After frugalpup-installer has created a grub.cfg for the first partition copy those files to somewhere (safe). Then run frugalpup-installer again for the other partition(s). Then edit a final grub.cfg to include the listings for all Puppys.
[Note frugalpup-installer, itself, will only over-write conflicting files already on the USB-Stick. It does not delete other files.
Quibble: I have yet to figure out how to get a graphic image to appear on the boot-screen