So, I am able to get puppylinux to install on a USB drive so that I have some persistence and can take from one system to another.

Doing this on a ~2006 ibm thinkpad.

On USB1 (thumbdrive), I have used Balena etcher to write the 32 bit puppy ISO.

I use that to boot the machine, everything is perfect.

Now, I try to do the "install" onto a second USB thumbdrive (USB2) and it makes me go through gparted (partition manager), which I have done several times. wiped it, created a new partition.

Did the install and it prompted me to say, the "boot flag" is not on, and it should be, so the installer brought me back into gparted, and I adjusted the boot flag to on.

It finished, everything looked clean, I tried to reboot using the newly created USB2. The computer says that it is not bootable.

Any ideas? Am I doing something wrong in gparted? Should I be creating multiple partitions, one for booting and one for saving files? I'm new to this.

Thanks!

Did the installer do the install grub routine?

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How would I know if it did? I don't remember seeing anything called grub in the process. The instructions on the puppyLinux site (for a USB install) don't say anything about a grub routine.

PS. What is a grub routine?

From your answer my guess is no.
for this to work you will need to know what /dev/sd?? the second usb is called
boot into the first usb, plug in the second usb, mount, and know it's mount point.
will be something like /mnt/sdc1, maybe something different.
go to system>legacy grub. under the expert mode, the entries with hd0, assuming there is only one partition on usb will be (hd2,0) if the usb is sdc, (hd3,0) if sdd and so on.

@ mabo11:-

You might just as well use Puppy's built-in Grub4DOS bootloader. I know some folks will turn round & say 'Ooh, you shouldn't use that; hasn't been maintained for years', to which I reply that for Puppy this is not true.

The version of Grub4DOS that Puppy uses is specially modified for Pup's unusual method of running from compressed files, and is regularly maintained by the Woof-CE team over at Github.

Just out of curiosity, and for our information, which specific version of Puppy are you using here? Just saying '32-bit' doesn't tell me much; at the last count, there were well over 5000 different versions, re-spins & re-masters of Puppy to be found online......!


Mike.

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I have no issues with grub4dos, it works I use it from time to time.
The op has two usbs with puppy on them one boots one doesn't, puppy legacy-grub-config has more control over where the boot files go IMHO when started from the menu.

Ah, it's nice to know there ARE people around who aren't 'hide-bound' in their choice of bootloader. Kudos to you, sir.

I know the majority of users run with GRUB2 because it's the default offering from most 'mainstream' distros. And there's certainly several 'Puppians' of my acquaintance who still prefer the legacy-grub bootloader, simply because it's more in keeping with what they've always been used to.

I guess I've been spoilt with Pup's version of Grub4DOS, because I've never yet found a distro it won't boot.....and I've run quite a mixture on here over the years. It's even a piece of cake to 'chain-load' it to those rare offerings that simply won't have anything to do with it; just let 'em install GRUB2 to the partition rather than the MBR.....

I always found GRUB2 to be unnecessarily bloated for what it was.....and have always disliked 'legacy' GRUB after a particularly frustrating experience trying to get SliTaZ booting from HDD, a few years ago.....

Different strokes for different folks, I always say. If it works for you, use it.


Mike.