Okay. Here is goes:

I am a complete newbie when it comes to all of this stuff. A friend of mine gave me a laptop to try to fix. Windows was BEYOND repair, and he said anything would work. The only Live CD I can get to run is Puppy Linux, and it is running GREAT. I'm on it now. The only problem is, I can't figure out how to install in to the hard drive. I did the whole GRUB bootloader thing and it starts up when I turn on the computer, but when I select Linux, nothing happens unless the CD is in the computer. I went through the install process, and chose to install it to the hard drive. My main question being, how should I format the hard drive? I'm using gparted. There are NO other OS's installed on the computer. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated. I'd hate to give him his computer back and tell him he has to pop a CD in every time he needs to use the computer. If I need to give more information to be helped, just tell me what you need to know. Thanks in advance!

Hi,

Okay, Puppy/MacPup are a challenge. Here's what I did (mileage may vay):

- start the system with the CD rom
- mount the hard drive (the USB stick om MacPup)
- start GParted (it's in the menu)
- partition the hard drive, one single slab ought to do...if you wan to keep it simple
- use the Puppy Universal Installer and install on the (mounted) hard drive
- then install Grub (hda0) - I assumed it would be installed automatically, it's not apparently...
- make shure the BIOS is set to boot from the hard drive and make sure the hard drive is in the boot list

Installed it on that one, and it ran like a train...

By the way, what are the specs of the machine? If possible, ever considrered Xubuntu? Puppy/MacPup do not seem to have an update function as far as I can tell...

Luck!

Thor

That is a pretty certain indication that you did not install Grub to the master boot record on the hard drive but to the partition on which you have Puppy. Since you have no other operating systems on the computer, it would be necessary to install Grub to the mbr.

If you boot Puppy and open a terminal and run this command: fdisk -l (lower case Letter L) you can get your partition information, post it here and someone will be able to tell you how to install Grub to the mbr.

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XUBUNTU, is it a small like Puppy? The computer wouldn't take OpenSUSE or Ubuntu, or any Windows OS for that matter.

Hi,

Xubuntu is geared towards the older/smaller/lighter systems, a perfect medicine for the older laptops. See the specs !

Ubuntu is the "big sister" and, as with all big(ger) sisters, needs a bigger room...
So, indeed, Ubuntu might not like a too small system...

Okay, let's see, what's the make/age of the laptop? Maybe that'll help determining the specs. Alternatively, you could just do the bold thing: download Xubuntu, burn a disc and ... just do it, install that is. If the laptop does not meet the specs, the installer will let you know. After all, it could not get any worse...

Thor

Okay, at the risk of over-doing it, here's how I installed MacPup:

- start the PC with the CD-rom
- let the thing spin until you see a setup splash
- set things up (keys, time zone, language, stuff)

to install again:
- follow appklications-setup-universal setup
- start gparted (middle button, kinda white-ish) - have the tutorial handy...
- lift all partitions and make one lump (will erase everything!) just to make it easy
- make sure it's ext2
- follow the installer, it knows best...
- select "full install"
- get coffee...

to install Grub
- mount your drive (button with the USB stick)
- follow applications-system-grub setup
- choose "simple"
- select your drive, enter what it says on the folder bar as you mounted the drive (eg "/dev/sda1")
- let the thing do it...

reboot & remove the CD-rom

it worked here...I'll follow this thread to help more if needed!

Luck!

Thor

If I do a
on a ext2 partition I always get a

"Filesystem state: not clean"

I always would recommend ext3 for an OS and ext2 for just data partitions.

For frugal installations of Puppy OS there is the problem of having fsck.ext4 compiled as static binary for the initrd.gz , so I don't know if it is sure to install Puppy OS frugally to ext4 partition .

1 . Do you know about grub ? Does somewhere exists a /boot/grub/menu.lst or grub.cfg on the drive ?

2 . Which [linux] OS had been installed before ?

3 . How much partitions do you have ?

4 . Is your BIOS able to boot the whole disk or only the first parts of it ?

5 . I would recommend a partition scheme like

LINUX primary ext3
LINUX extended
and on that extended partition at least one SWAP partition of 2xRAM
and also on that extended partition a second installation (run the installer a second time with putting in the second partition to install to) .

And as stated , do install to MBR !
The installer suggest to install to superblock of the partition , but I don't know how to boot this . Somehow I read about putting in some lines into windows boot.ini , but I think there is a GRUB on the MBR from another linuxOS .

If you can find [some] file[s] of /boot/grub/menu.lst and/or /boot/grub/grub.cfg
could you please post its contents ?