I should point out I have not downloaded RC2, I am currently running RC1 at the moment.

As mentioned in another thread, I had issues installing to the hard drive.

First of all, when doing a normal install, it wanted to coexist with the previous Linux system anyway. Well, I didn't want it to coexist.

I deleted the old partitions and used cfdisk to make a new one. However, I discovered that the installation script will not format my hard drive like it used to. Simple solution, though, before running the installation, go to the prompt and type

"mkfs -t ext3 /dev/hda1"

if you're wanting to install on hda1...or just wherever you're wanting to install.

Second issue. For some reason, if I had two partitions set up with cfdisk, it would recognize hda2 and not hda1. Well, just delete hda2, and it will recognize it. You can add hda2 back later.

Third...upgrading. I find that when upgrading, once again, it wants to coexist with the previous installation. I tried it and it wanted to add lines to grub, as if it was just adding another OS instead of upgrading the current one. So I decided to wipe it clean instead.

So, these are the issues I ran into when doing a hard drive install that some of you may want to be aware of.

I ran into these issues on both of my computers, so I have a feeling it may not be just me, unless I'm doing something completely wrong.

I run Puppy mainly as one of many systems in a 5-disk formation.

As far as I am aware there is no need to format a partition before an installation.

Every installer will want to know which partition or partitions the user wants for installation and most of them will format the partition or partitions automatically before installing anything inside. As a rule an installer doesn't trust the user and you are probably the very reason for it.

Thus I think the whole problem goes away if one specify a partition, with an existing Linux inside, for an installation. The installer will automatically wipe clean everything to install a new system into it.

I think a user pre-format a partition may be unwelcomed by some installer. Just think would Grafpup want to be installed into an Ext3 filing system? I know Puppy has two installation modes and one of them needs a hard disk with only one fat partition (to suit pen drives). What's wrong to allow the installer to offer the choice of filing systems it supports?

Every OS, icluding Linux, will not destroy another system in a partition outside its own control. That is what you expect it to behave. If you install an OS that cannot co-exist with systems already in the PC you have real trouble coming.

I tell it which partition to install to when it asks. But when I have more than one partition on the hard drive, it just makes one of the partitions available for me to pick from, instead of all of the available partitions.

I didn't necessarily want it to co-exist with other systems right now. If I did, I would have chosen the coexist install instead of the normal install. I wanted to upgrade, not coexist.

Keep in mind, this is the release candidate, and there's still a few bugs for Nathan and others to work out. And I haven't heard about anyone else having the problems I had. Perhaps I'm doing something wrong, and something wasn't clear to me. But I did manage to get it installed.

If I am not wrong Grafpup is a variation of Puppy and there isn't much scope to use more than one partition for its small footprint. If you use more than one partition it would be for mounting /boot, /home etc separately. All Linux can be installed in a single partition with only swap as the separate one.

I got the feeling when you chose co-exist the installer then left the existing system alone. In your interpreted normal install Grafpup may take over the entire hard disk and wipe everything clean.

Grafpup may be the wrong distro if you are applying all the bells and whistles of a full size Linux.

Umm, I was making another partion for use for something else in the future. I know Grafpup only requires 1 partition. Some Grafpup users may want to install other operating systems to other paritions, you know.

I'm talking about upgrade here. For some reason, the upgrade would not wipe everything clean. It would coexist when I didn't want it to. I wanted it to upgrade the operating system, but keep everything else.

No, I'm not expecting all the bells and whistles. I don't know if you realize this, but I have helped a little bit with this distro, and I know what it is. It seems that you're assuming I'm a newbie to Grafpup or something. I'm not. You can ask Nathan, I've been using Grafpup for a while now, ever since it came out, really.

All I wanted to do is point out some issues some people might run into while installing. I wasn't asking for anyone's help, comments, or advice. Comments are welcome, but beyond that, I got Grafpup installed, so I really don't need help. Thanks. I just wanted to tell everyone what I did to get it installed, in case they have any problems.

OK I might have misinterpreted your question.

I did download Grafpup but didn't install it so I may be speaking above my head.

However I did install Puppy as one of the 145 systems and have it operational on pen drives and external hard disks. The only reason that a distro wanting the entire disk to have only one partition is likely due to the way how its installer had been written and that is usually to simplify installation into pen drives which untill recently are always supplied with a single preformatted fat16 partition. fat16 filing system, using the common cluster sizes, has no address capability beyond 2Gb.

If a user wants more partitions he/she simply uses the alternative installation method like for a normal Linux with the standard /boot, /home, /bin, etc directories. Such is always the standard features of small foot print distros like DSL and Puppy.

In conclusion I suggest the single partition requirement in a hard disk installation may be method-related not necessarily a defect in the distro. Both my Puppy and DSL are inside hard disks each with the maximum-permitted 63 partitions, all filled of OSs. I simply has not run into a distro that dares to take over say an entire 300Gb disk for its own installation. There has been some odd installers making advances like "Shall I format the whole disk?"

I'm not asking for help! I'm just letting Nathan F and others know of what to do if they run into the problems I ran into.

There's no question to be misinterpreted, because there is no question.

I posted because based on the description I didn´t think there were issues.

Thing like

even entirely true it can only be the problem of "cfdisk" and not necessary the distro.

Technically in a hard disk table there cannot be entry for the second position of hda2 if the fisrt position has not been filled.

If "cfdisk" does not display hda1 then the partition may be erroneous and a second opinion should be sought by "fdisk".

If Grafpup has really messed up things then a bug report with evidence printout to the distro site would save us speculating.

Well, I know I had an hda1 and hda2 set up in cfdisk.

At this point, it doesn't really matter to me now, no point in continuing this thread. I only posted it in case anyone else had the same problem installing. I didn't post for anyone to help me. I know how I got around it.

Nathan F already knows, I don't think he's been able to replicate the problem any, but I know what's going on on my machine.

I may give fdisk a try instead of using cfdisk next time I do a full install, but now, it doesn't matter. I got it installed anyway.

Try not to get your hackles up, Joey. Remember that now we have a forum with a much wider user group, just by being on linuxquestions.org, so I expect we're going to see a lot more differing opinions than before.

At this point I don't have hard data about any issues, as Joey correctly stated I have been unable to reproduce any problem. That does not mean there isn't one, and since I did not write the installer myself it is going to be up for a good going over sometime. Dougal over on the Puppy forum has been putting a lot of work into it already, but I have to do a lot of manual tweaking whenever I get his code because the two distros are not as similar as people think.

I do want to point out that a full hard drive install with the files spread out in a conventional filesystem is not the main intent of Grafpup (or Puppy). That's not to say I don't care about these installations or won't support them, but the most work goes into making things work for the live cd and flash booting. I personally run mine off a 500MB Jumpdrive now, so I can go from machine to machine and work on the same files. An added benefit is that in both of these cases (live cd and flash) there is a considerable speed benefit, as everything except any extra packages you install is running totally in ram. But I do have a couple full hard drive installs too, which I use for compiling so I can spread out the files a bit more and not fill up a 500mb save file.

I'd like to take a moment to make a clarification also. I have a bug tracker set up and want it to be used, but I don't want it filling up with things that might be specific to one computer, or user error (even power users make mistakes), or tons of feature requests. I think that this forum was exactly the right place for this discussion to take place, because until we have some better idea what went on in this isolated incident a real bug report would be useless.

When I get a bug report on the tracker I want as much information as possible, of the best quality. If possible I even want suggestions about how to fix the problem. Code contributions even.

There is also the issue of where the report should go, as well. If there is a bug in Gxine I don't really want to be asked to fix it unless I caused it by some bad configuration, but rather it should go to the developers of that application. The installer is actually another one of those cases, frankly, because it is primarily code I inherited from Puppy. So before we get to that point I would want to see if an install of Puppy experiences the same problems. If it does then we need to file that bug "upstream", or if not then most likely I caused it somehow.

I'm sure I could be more specific, but I'd rather not be forced to be so at this point. but I think it might be a good idea to put the brakes on this thread a bit for now.

Nathan

I was just thinking, in the install script, in case the script does not show the partition you want to install to, could it by possible to offer a button that says "other partition not listed" and then the user just types the partition "/dev/hda1" or whatever in?

Yes, that could probably be implemented. But not for this release, maybe for 2.01.

Nathan

Sounds good. At least I know enough to handle the current installation procedure. :-)