hi

neither the CD nor the usb can boot on this old dell latitude. no internet either.

it's running ubuntu off the hard drive. ubuntu can read the usb drive.

how can i install the puppy iso from inside ubuntu?

thanks!

There are two ways to install Puppy : frugal and full .
In Puppy itself clicking the .iso file in the file-manager would open the .iso-archive and show the files inside the .iso-file using the script [/usr]/sbin/filemnt , which accesses a dotISO file with the "mount -o loop" command .
The main file would be something like "puppy.sfs" .
If you copy this "lupu-525.sfs" on top of the filesystem or one level deep into realpath /Puppy_525/lupu-525.sfs you would nearly already have a frugal installation .
Now the kernel which is named "vmlinuz" has to be copied out of the .iso into the Ubuntu partition and for frugal also the file "initrd.gz" .
The next would be to add Puppy to the grub bootloader .
Assuming you have installed grub2 :
Open /boot/grub/grub.cfg with kate or gedit and add this to somewhere in the middle of this grub.cfg file :

menuentry "Lupu-525" {
insmod ext2
set root='(hd0,1)'
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 429ee1ed-70a4-43a5-89f8-33496c489260
linux /Puppy_525/vmlinuz pdev=sda1 psubdir=Puppy_525 panic=60 debug
initrd /Puppy_525/initrd.gz
}

Assuming Ubuntu is installed on the first partition .
You might put vmlinuz , initrd.gz and the puppy.sfs into different folders , but the boot script inside the initrd.gz file searches actively for puppy files on the disk(s) and putting them into a single directory may reduce confusion , reduce typing errors an speedup the boot .

The "--fs-uuid --set 429ee1ed-70a4-43a5-89f8-33496c489260" -number should be the same as the Ubuntu installation number , obtainable by the blkid command .

Installing Puppy full into an empty partition of approx. 1GB would need to open the puppy.sfs-archive itself also to copy the files from this dotSFS to the top of the empty partition . Therefore you would have to load the squashfs driver by 'modprobe squashfs' . Older Puppies with kernel up to 2.6.28 or 29 are made with squashfs-version_3 and later Puppies with squashfs-version_4 . If you are running an Ubuntu-kernel of pre-2.6.30 you may not be able to open a newer dotSFS file .

i'm a noob, but please tell me if these steps are essentially the same. i think they might be:

http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/30...entry585740612

my puppy lucid 5 install hung partway through the boot.
then i tried the same method with puppy wary 5, and it booted successfully.

On short sight it is 90% the same .
On thing to know is that the shell-script called "init" inside the initrd.gz manages 99,9% of the boot process , with 0,5% grub igniting vmlinuz and 0,5% vmlinuz configured to support initial-ram-disk . The init script can be programmed as one likes , mainly to load drivers not compiled into the vmlinuz-kernel .
The kernel has got a large amount of additional parameters and passes these parameters to the init-script . Parameters unknown to the kernel get passed to the init-script too . These are distro specific parameters .
Puppy-parameters show off by hitting F2 at the 5sec. boot-delay of the liveCD which show the (text-)file(s) help.msg .

"fromhd=/dev/hda4" might be a knoppix specific boot-parameter , similar to the pdev1=sda1 Puppy-boot-parameter . pdev=sda1 also worked for me until now . The init-script tests if Puppy-specific boot-parameters are passed to it , but don't test for other distro-specific boot-parameters . It would ignore them , because they are not mentioned anywhere in the inti-script , and what is unknown can be either programmed to stop , ask or ignore .

The mount command syntax seems to be ok @neowin.net , and the grub entry is for legacy-grub1 /boot/grub/menu.lst .

pretty sure virtualbox is available as an easy install option for ubuntu, but not sure about vmware

there are many diff install options with pup, from very easy to way more complicated, depends also if you want to multi boot or run pup within another OS at the same time

Thanks, I meant can I do a full hard disk install of puppy from inside ubuntu.

ok, as i understand, can puppy be installed to a full hd type install, within ubuntu, that is done typically via the Universal Installer

all i can say is afaik, pup has to at least be booted to a start page and running, to be able to use the UI for a full hd drive type install

i've not done that in ubuntu so someone else would have to provide details,

a manual frugal type install also might work for you , certainly pup has been dual or multi booted with other linux OSs to full HD setups, each having their own partitions

You can usually install linux from within linux. It isn't easy. The web pages that may help is to use the older install knoppix and use it for examples.

It would be easier to use a floppy or maybe use the installed grub to boot to the puppy cd. Might repost and ask on that.

The iso has to be mounted and the relevant sfs files inside the iso .

An empty linux formatted partition is required ( using gparted ) .

The contents of the sfs files have to be copied to the empty partition .

Also vmlinuz kernel .

Then the grub menu list or cfg has to be adjusted .

The technique above is just a manual frugal installation using a full partition which is a waste of space. A frugal installation may be made on the same partition that Ubuntu is installed. A seperate partition is not necessary. Preferably, all files are placed in a puppy directory.

IMHO a frugal installation is the best approach. See http://puppylinux.org/wikka/FrugalOrFullInstallation for a comparison.

A full hard drive installation that is done with the puppy Universal Installer will require it's own partition. The only way I know to use the Installer is to have puppy running from a CD. To manually accomplish a full hard drive installation the files mentioned above must be opened and placed in all the appropriate directories which is above my skill level.

I said "THE CONTENTS of the SFS"
NOT
"THE SFS ITSELF"

The ISO may have been corrupted during download, check it.

dunno what your no boot from cd is about exactly but if you have a floppy drive, pup offers a feature (makes a boot floppy, used to be called wake up ..or something) where you can sometimes get a cd to boot, even on a 'pute that was never boot capable from cd,

there are also other folks who offer boot floppy options that allows a boot from other drives,

might start another thread on the "no internet either" part if it is an issue, rather than just giving a relevant fact

I have found from experience that on some of the new puppy versions the SFS file that is part of the ISO file cannot be mounted just by clicking on them.
I got spoiled by the ones that would mount by a click on them and so using the loop method to mount them has been lost to me.
Can someone that knows how to mount an SFS file using the loop method refresh my memory as to the commands/steps required?
Thanks in advance.

The new racy sfs are compressed with xz , not with gz anymore .
You would need to run a kernel later than 2.6.38 to mount xz compressed sfs files .
The commands to mount them should be inside /usr/sbin/filemnt .

You would need to unsquash xz compressed sfs running that OS
and mksquashfs them using gz compression if you want to mount them in older puppies .
This is similar to the /usr/local/sfsconvert/sfsconvert to convert squashfs v3 to v4 .
mksquashfs --help in console should explain a little .