FrugalPup v41, very flexible Puppy frugal installer, supporting i18n

[gyrog]

Last chance for suggestions/comments.
Thankyou to everyone who has contributed.
I'm going to start finalising v39 for release.

[Jasper]

Look forward to the final update

Thanks for all the hard work!!

[gyrog]

FrugalPup v39 is available.

FrugalPup 39, DiskPup 39, StickPup 39 and f2StickPup 39 - Puppy frugal installer.
Actually e3StickPup 39 and e4StickPup 39 also make their first appearance.

'frugalpup_39.sfs'(3 MiB) or 'frugalpup-39.pet'(3 MiB) can be downloaded from https://www.mediafire.com/folder/rdyc5l ... /frugalpup.

This is the release version of FrugalPup v39 supporting translation (gettext).
It was meant to contain no other changes, but it does.

1. e3StickPup 39 and e4StickPup 39 are just symbolic links to a slightly modified f2StickPup.
Unfortunately this produced a change to a small number of gettext() messages in the f2stickpup script.
Since f2StickPup formats it's Linux partition as f2fs,
it's not surprising that e3StickPup formats it's Linux partition as ext3,
and e4StickPup formats it's Linux partition as ext4.
Note: During testing I noticed that e3StickPup and e4StickPup took a lot longer to format the usb stick than f2StickPup.

I've also uploaded a 'frugalpup_39.po' file.

[thinkpadfreak]

Hello.

I downloaded frugalpup 39, but the screens of e3stickpup and e4stickpup seem to be the same as f2stickpup.

[gyrog]

I downloaded frugalpup 39, but the screens of e3stickpup and e4stickpup seem to be the same as f2stickpup.

Yes.
I fixed what it does and the dialog "title", but not the text inside the dialogs.

Looks like a version 40, soon.

[Jasper]

@gyrog

Don't forget the #1 message to reflect the update

[gyrog]

Don't forget the #1 message to reflect the update

That's not the only thing I forgot.
Hmm..., I seem too have done a "beta" release for v39.
I didn't update the images in the help files.
I didn't produce an AppDir.

[gyrog]

FrugalPup v40 is available.

FrugalPup v40, DiskPup v40, StickPup v40 and f2StickPup v40 - Puppy frugal installer.
Along with e3StickPup v40 and e4StickPup v40.

'frugalpup_40.sfs'(3 MiB) or 'frugalpup-40.pet'(3 MiB) or 'FrugalPup_AppDir-40.tar.gz' can be downloaded from https://www.mediafire.com/folder/rdyc5l ... /frugalpup.

This release is only the second FrugalPup that supports translation using 'gettext()'.
It fixes the text in the top of the first dialog in 'f2StickPup', so that it is appropriately different for 'e3StickPup' and 'e4StickPup'.

Thankyou to all the forum members who helped me get to this point.

I've also uploaded a 'frugalpup_40.po' file.

[gyrog]

I forgot to update my web pages to reflect v40, done now.
http://www.fishprogs.software/puppy/fru ... index.html

I am in the process of moving my web site to github.
https://gyrog.github.io/puppy/frugalpup/index.html

The 2 sites are currently independent.
Sometime in the not too distant future, I will modify my domain (www.fishprogs.software) to point to github.

[thinkpadfreak]

Thanks for the version 40.

I opened a thread about frugalpup in the Puppy Linux Japanese Forum.
https://sakurapup.com/forum1/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=3633

frugalpup40_NLS-ja.pet, which will install the .mo file in its appropriate place, can be downloaded from there.

[gyrog]

Thanks for the version 40.

You are welcome.
And thanks for all your effort to support this project.

[gyrog]

Sorry folks, the symbolic-links for 'e3stickpup' and 'e4stickpup' are misssing from 'FrugalPup_AppDir-40.tar.gz'.
I have uploaded 'FrugalPup_AppDir-40a.tar.gz' to https://www.mediafire.com/folder/rdyc5l ... /frugalpup.

The code inside will still say "v40".

[muggins]

Hello Gyro,

I'm going crazy trying to get a laptop to boot. I wiped windows & can boot puppy from a usb. i then used your
frugalPup to install to the laptop's hardisk, but when I reboot, the grub menu comes up, but then gives an error:

grub: no such device UUID

The UUID is the same one as shown by blkid, gdisk shows the mbr as "protective" & gpt as "present", and a fat32 partition & two ext4 partitions.

Oddly though, when I enter the grub commandline & enter "ls /"

it shows (hd0,gpt3), (hd0,gpt2) & (hd0.gpt1), then, doing "ls /(hd0,gpt3)" , then for gpt2 & gpt1, They all show as fat partitions!

I also tried installing refind, but couldn't get it to boot either.

Any ideas about what the problem could be?

[gyrog]

@muggins,
I've never seen anything like it.

But you description suggests that the HD could have a problem.
If there is nothing valuable on it, I would suggest that you re-partition it using "gparted".
Start with a "Device->Create Partition Table..." while you are there.

Unfortunately, a way to really prove if it is your HD, would be to replace it with a "spare" HD that you know is OK.

[d-pupp]

I agree with Gyro
Start over and reparation the hard drive something messed up the first time

[bigpup]

@muggins

What specific boot loader type did you install?
UEFI
UEFI64
UEFI32
mbr
both

You did use Frugalpup to install the boot loader?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Make sure to use Gparted in one of the newer versions of Puppy.
So you are using a newer version of it.

Better to use this:
For partitioning I would suggest you use the Gparted live CD or USB that you can get from here.
You can download a free version to make your own Gparted live CD or USB.
It is up to date and specifically made to run Gparted.
Info:
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php
Download:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gparted ... ve-stable/

[muggins]

OK,

I downloaded newest gparted, created new gpt partition table, create 256Mb fat32 partition, with esp & boot flags set.

Then used FrugalPup Boot option to configure boot. I've tried both uefi64 & uefi, and still grub can't see device uuid. I
tried generating a new uuid, with gparted, but same problem.

I wonder if it could be a bios issue. Bios is Insyde type, and in trying variations of enable/disable uefi boot, and registering
uefi boot keys, trying to erase all such uefi, & reset to factory default, I've possibly stuffed up somewhere.

As I just bought laptop yesterday, I'll see if I can return it...hopefully warranty not voided by my wiping windows!

On a more general note, I've tried googling this, but haven't found a clear answer, is there an alternative to using
"search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root xxxxxxxx". Like using "search --no-floppy set root=(hd0,gpt2)"

Reason I ask is because I've had previous experiences, (on other laptops), where it has taken several attempts to
get --fs-uuid to work.

[bigpup]

@muggins

As I just bought laptop yesterday, I'll see if I can return it...hopefully warranty not voided by my wiping windows!

You most likely did kill the warranty

Start a topic about this in the Beginners Help section of the forum.

Provide the specifics of the laptop.
Make and model.
Size of the internal drive?
What type drive is it?
HDD, SSD, etc...........

I assume you made at least two partitions on the drive.
1st a small one formatted fat32 to hold the boot loader files.
at least one other partition to do a Puppy frugal install on. Formatted ext 3 or 4.

I assume it had Windows 11 on it.
Correct?

When you use Gparted does it show the complete size the drive is suppose to be?

When you removed Windows OS from the drive.
How exactly did you do it??????

You are doing something wrong.
Just have to figure out what

I would try using a msdos type partition table.

[muggins]

Is an acer aspire 5 laptop with 512Mbyte nvme drive. No idea what windows version as I just wiped it by using gparted reformat. Now has 1 small fat32 partition & 2 ext4 partitions. And yes, gparted showing correct size.

But won't be returning laptop as burned mxlinux to dvd, & it installs to hdisk & boots properly. On my current laptop I had the same issues with getting puppy to boot from hdisk. FrugalPup boot didn't work, (unfortunately I didn't take note if it was the same error message of "no such device"). I had to install mxlinux to hdisk, make sure it booted, then wiped mxlinux, install puppy, used FrugalPup again, and this time it worked.

But with the acer aspire this hasn't worked. Anyway, isn't to important as I bought laptop for a mate, who has never used linux, and will just re-install mxlinux for him. But I can't believe I'm the only person having difficulties with installing puppy to gpt uefi bios computers.

[gyrog]

"search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root xxxxxxxx". Like using "search --no-floppy set root=(hd0,gpt2)"

"search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root xxxxxxxx" was chosen because it should be the most reliable,
from the point of view of only detecting the correct partition.

I have a little Lenovo S100 Thinkpad, whiich can't even decide if the inbuilt SSD or the micro SD card is the first device.
Of course the UUID is always connected to the appropriate partition, no matter which device it is on this boot.

On a slightly different note, I had a lot of difficulty booting Puppy on this machine until I disovered it would only boot with uefi32.

Sorry, this is not actually helping with the presented problem, so I'll get back to it.

If you can boot a Puppy from a USB stick, it should be able to boot the same thing from an internal HD/SSD.
Can a Puppy booted from a USB stick correctly find the UUID of the internal partitions with "blkid"?
Does a USB stick created by StickPup, boot?
How about a USB HD/SSD using DiskPup?

Isn't there a problem with ext4 partitions formated with 64bit software being used with a 32bit OS.
But, surely it can't be this since it's grub2 that's complaining, unless it's using uefi32.
This could be tested by repartitioning the internal disk to have a 4GiB fat32 partition as the first partition.
Then use DiskPup (or FrugalPup) to install both Puppy and Boot files to this partition.

[one]

"search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root xxxxxxxx". Like using "search --no-floppy set root=(hd0,gpt2)"

"search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root xxxxxxxx" was chosen because it should be the most reliable,
from the point of view of only detecting the correct partition.

Hi @gyrog,

shouldn't the "search" line be like this (--set=root and fs-uuid in other order)?

Code: Select all

search --no-floppy --set=root --fs-uuid xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

peace

[bigpup]

@muggins

This computer most likely had Windows 11s on it.

The reason I asked about the displayed size, when you made a new partition table on the drive.

windows 11 has a hidden partition used for recovery.

Making a new partition table should have deleted it.

[muggins]

@One asked if order should be "search --no-floppy --set=root --fs-uuid xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"

On my usual latop I altered "search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" to ""search --no-floppy --set=root --fs-uuid xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
and no difference.

[muggins]

Well, after a lot of frigging around, reformatting, changing partition ids etc, installing then re-installing refind, finally I've booted from the hard disk with refind. The difference is that this time I didn't install puppy in a subdirectory. (I tried same thing with frugalPup, but still get the unknown uuid/device error message).

Unfortunately I've looked in the refind subdirectory, on the fat32 partition, and have no idea of what methodology it's using to detect vmlinuz on the first ext4 partition.

Edit: When I boot up to refind boot logo, it shows two penguin images. One successfully boots vmlinuz whilst the other brings up the grub menu, pointing at vmlinuz on the ext4 uuid directory, but fails with unknown device.

[bigpup]

I would try making the drive partition table msdos type.

Why?

Puppy has never fully been tested and bug fixed to 100% support GPT

In the old days the partition table (aka MSDOS) did not have any unique identifiers for its partitions. Instead the unique ID was baked into the filesystem which is called the UUID. Since it is part of the filesystem each is free to come up with their own ID scheme and length of ID (or even omit it altogether). As you can see ext4 and vfat/exfat have two different lengths for their UUIDs and this varies more across different filesystems though a lot of Linux ones use a similar format.

All my drives are using msdos type partition table.
They seem to boot whatever i put on them using Frugalpup installed boot loaders.

[muggins]

After changing to msdos partition table, with gparted, then running FrugalPup, I get same the same "no such device" error message.

Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 476.94 GiB, 512110190592 bytes, 1000215216 sectors
Disk model: WD PC SN740 SDDQNQD-512G-1014
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x86482151

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1 * 2048 526335 524288 256M b W95 FAT32
/dev/nvme0n1p2 526336 500320255 499793920 238.3G 83 Linux
/dev/nvme0n1p3 500320256 1000214527 499894272 238.4G 83 Linux

[muggins]

Anyway, I only mentioned this issue in Gyro's thread as I'd never encountered such a recalcitrant laptop &/or bios before. As I'm offloading to a mate tomorrow, with mxlinux on it, we can put this one on the back burner. Cheers.

[bigpup]

Frugalpup v40 doing an install with the main program.

Any of the Puppy versions that have the ucode.cpio file in their ISO.

This ucode.cpio file is not being put into the frugal install made by Frugalpup installer.

The boot loader install does seem to have the entry to use ucode.cpio if present.

I just checked this using the main program.

Not sure about the other installer programs provided by Frugalpup.

ucode.cpio contains Intel and AMD CPU microcode updates, which can fix system instability issues (some CPUs are sold with a slightly broken version built-in, and they're unstable unless a newer version is loaded at boot time) and contains mitigations for CPU vulnerabilities (Spectre, Meltdown, Downfall ...). For this to work, your boot loader needs to be configured to load ucode.cpio and not only initrd.gz. If you don't want this for whatever reason, you can delete ucode.cpio.

[d-pupp]

My first install to this pc was with Fosapup. It doesn't use microcode
I had to do a manual install when I switched to Vanilladpup so my original start ups were without the microcode
I coped the if statement from Vanilladpup to my menu.lst and it worked

Code: Select all

if [ -e /path/ucode.cpio ]; then
    initrd /path/ucode.cpio /path/initrd.gz
 else
    initrd /path/initrd.gz
 fi

You can see if it is using the microcode with this code

Code: Select all

dmesg | grep -i microcode

[gyrog]

I coped the if statement from Vanilladpup to my menu.lst and it worked

And strangely, here is a quote from a grub.cfg menuentry generated by FrugalPup a long time ago:

Code: Select all

  if [ -e /pups/xenial/local-initrd.gz ]; then
    set local_rd=/pups/xenial/local-initrd.gz
  else
    set local_rd=
  fi
  if [ -e /pups/xenial/ucode.cpio ]; then
    set ucode_rd=/pups/xenial/ucode.cpio
    echo "Loading ucode.cpio and mio_initrd.gz"
  else
    set ucode_rd=
    echo "Loading mio_initrd.gz"
  fi
  initrd $ucode_rd /pups/xenial/mio_initrd.gz $local_rd