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  • From: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [BL] dual-boot bl and puppy linux with loadlin or lilo
  • Date: Sun, 1 Nov 2009 14:51:41 +0000 (UTC)

SINDI wrote:

Puppy Linux works with every network card and wireless card I have tested, with lucent and pctel modems, with most sound cards, and has GTK2 and flash and recent kernel and glibc. If you boot from live CD you can then mount the BL partition and run Opera from the wrapper script opera (cd /opera-*, ./opera). Probably seamonkey and firefox would also work that way.

There is a version with Firefox 3.5 (Browserlinux) which it might be possible to copy to Puppy 4.30, including Flash.

Puppy has problems with hardware that BL works with - video, sound, mice. It does not usually properly identify serial mice. Did not work on a laptop with two types of PS/2 mouse. Identifed our PS/2 as USB (it is USB plugged into a PS/2 port). Identifies DVD as CD drives, etc. Automated but makes errors. It uses about 40MB of RAM before running programs (more if you set up sound and printer). Loads lots of modules that you may never use. 128MB memory to run it properly, and 256 lets you run from RAM. NOT suitable for older laptops but it does some things that BL does not.

Puppy 4.30 'frugal' installation copies over a large .sfs file or two to any partition (and loads it into RAM when you boot - 3 sec lag on 300MHz computers to extract each file from the big one) and can install syslinux for you. They give hints about how to set up grub manually. Either of these would probably work for dual-booting with BL, if you know how.

To boot with loadlin or lilo (from BL):

I made a /puppy430 directory in my linux partition (/dev/hda2). Puppy's 2.6 kernel calls it /dev/sda2. I put in the CD, mounted it, and copied everything to /puppy430 (but all you need is *.sfs, vmlinuz, and initrd.gz). YOu do not need to boot the CD to install.

hda1 is DOS (has to be for loadlin, maybe not for lilo).
mount /dev/hda1 /hd
mkdir /hd/puppy430

cp /puppy430/vmlinuz /hd/puppy430/
cp /puppy430/initrd.gz /hd/puppy430/


Loadlin - copy loadlin.exe from baslin or bl2 to /hd/puppy430
From DOS, create c:\puppy430\puppy.bat
loadlin vmlinuz initrd=initrd.gz ro pmedia=idehd nosmp
(these last two are optional)

On a computer where puppy was the only thing in hda2, I was also able to add to this line pdev1=/dev/sda2
which cut boot time by 8 seconds (does not have to hunt for files)
On a computer with BL in the same directory this prevented it from finding the sfs file.

Lilo - make sure you have lilo and lilo.conf that already works.

mount /dev/hda1 /hd

Add to lilo (change /hd/puppy430 to wherever your files are, but
they probably need to be in the first 1GB or so)

image=/hd/puppy430/vmlinuz
initrd=/hd/puppy430/initrd.gz
label=PUPPY
root=/dev/hda2 (change to match your .sfs file location)
read-only

You could try also adding
nosmp
pmedia=idehd
pdev1=/dev/sda2 (
psubdir=/puppy430

They might cause it to not boot, or to reboot to DOS.

Then type

lilo -v

Reboot and at the LILO: prompt type PUPPY.
(Or for loadlin cd \puppy430, puppy).

This worked for me on the first try!

Puppy 4.21 did not work with loadlin nor did Browserlinux Puppy 4.12 (black screen and flashing keyboard). Don't know why. They boot from live CD. initrd.gz may not be set up to work with loadlin.
I did not try them with lilo.

The 'full' installation might work this way too - try it.
When I powered off instead of shutting down, as an experiment, it crashed beyond the abilities of e2fsck to repair it. 'frugal' might do better. It does not run fsck when booting.

I will use this setup with cardbus wireless cards - boot to Puppy, go online, run BL programs in or from an rxvt or if non-graphical from a a real terminal (login puppy pass woofwoof). Experiment with things that need GKT2 (install them to BL or figure out how to install to Puppy).
The cardbus wireless cards work with weaker signals. My orinoco was useless recently while someone's newer laptop worked with wireless.
(I should ask The Answer Gang for help with cardbus network cards).

BL3 X programs (links2) won't work with glibc X in Puppy.
There is a Puppy links2. Opera 9 works. I may try Opera 10 this way.




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