What Grub should I install?
 

Hi Folks,
Linux newbie here. I have just installed puppy 501 and XP on an old Thinkpad 600. XP is on an NTFS partition, and puppy is on a fat32 (installed there from a puppy session). Presently I have to pop in the puppy cd to have it boot to puppy. I want to add grub so I can just dual boot. Which version of grub should I use? And are there instructions for this?

Thanks,

Bob

I think legacy grub (i.e., not grub2) can be, but why did you install Linux on fat32 ?.
You lose so much by not using a more modern filesystem - ext3 might be a better option. You can't convert, you'd probably be best re-installing if this is a new build.

Edit: In fact how did you install on fat32 - from a puppy terminal, post the output of

I guess you could put it under 'Newbie' category. I plan on making a disk image before I make any changes, but I can go back and make it ext3 or 4 and re install. Is there a utility that can convert it on the fly? I did the command you asked, but I cannot get it to copy/paste from the puppy terminal (that newb issue again). What would be the keystrokes? It says sda1 is NTFS and sda2 is W95 FAT32.

Thanks,

Bobby

There might be a menu - else highlight with the mouse and use <Ctrl>-<Shift>-c (or middle mouse button maybe). I presume that was the fsisk - what about the "mount" command ?. Post everything from both commands.

I presume that syg00 meant fdisk command. I would think you also have the cfdisk partitioner.

Puppy should have shipped with Grub1 from the factory. No need to get a second version of Grub.

It has two methods to install in a hard disk.

(1) Frugal install - this is to copy itself directly into a partition so that Puppy works exactly like a Live CD. The installation has footprint same size as the Live CD. Think this is about 100Mb. In this mode Puppy rolls up itself every time it is logged off in "one" big file. In this mode Puppy can be placed in a fat partition. Indeed this may be the general method described by Puppy when installing in a USB jump drive as it is always formatted in fat16 or fat32 filing system in the factory.

While operational Puppy is wholly in the ram so the Fat partition is just a home to go back to and has little consequence to its operation. Changes to the settings are not normally recorded unless instructed by the user.

(2) Normal hard disk install - Puppy needs a (possibly preformatted) Ext2 or Ext3 partition for this. The installation is same as a normal Linux installation where the files will be uncompressed and expanded to 3 to 5 times the size the image in the Live CD. This is a permanent installation and all setting changes will be recorded automatically.

Well I'm baffled. This morning I fired up the Thinkpad under puppy to give those keystrokes a try and found that I could not get on the internet. Long story short. For some reason puppy will not use my pcmcia ports. They are in the 'hardware info' listing (two Texas Instrumants card slots). But it isn't playing nice with them.

Last night I had the 'Hardware Info" app running and I could see the cards appear and disappear as I plugged them in and out. Also, the hard drive light would flicker when I did this. Today the 'Hardware Info' only sees the nic if I hit refresh, but still won't use it. It won't see my USB2 pccard at all (it did). I went over to XP and found that XP saw both cards and I was able to connect to the internet just fine. So the card slots are working. I checked the bios to confirm that 'quick boot' is disabled (I've heard that causes issues sometimes).

I also tried a fresh boot with the following command line 'acpi=force pfix=ram' (acpi=force was required to install last night, else it could not find lupu-501.sfs) and went through all the menus I had gone through last night, but had the same issue when it finally came up.

Also tried booting CD only w/o the HD installed....Same.

I'm baffeled as to what could have changed in the past 8 hours? Strange that the system sees the cardbus, but won't use it.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Bobby

Got cardbus working again using 'acpi=off apm=on', which doesn't make sense to me, as I HAD to use 'acpi=force' yesterday in order to install puppy. Otherwise I got an error...'cannot find lupu-501.sfs' and it dumped out to a prompt.

Also, I notoced that while the cardbus slots were inop, the sound worked!! Now that the cardbus is working again (using the Thinkpad with wireless rite now), the sound is inop. Conflict I suppose. Any ideas on that?

Anyway, here is the output you requested:

Disk /dev/sda: 20.0 GB, 20003880960 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2584 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 = 7741440 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 2313 17486248+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 2314 2583 2041200 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)


Having trouble copying the output of the 'mount' command. I'll keep trying though.

Comments?

Thanks,

Bobby

Confirmed that there is a conflict between the sound and USB/Cardbus. While I had the internet working, I ran the ASLA settup Wizard. It found the driver and passed the setup. I clicked on a sound file and it played. But as soon as it did, the lights on the NIC went off and the machine locked up. Is there a way to get an output of the present IRQ setup? And is there a way to change them? SHould I make this a different thread?

Thanks very much,

Bobby

I had exactly the same set of problems as you using puppy, simpy refusing to recognise any kind of internet connection. Never found a solution (though I'm watching this in case one turns up). In the end I just got shut of XP (wiped te drive) and installed Puppy alone with the auto grub install and everything works fine. No idea why.

It just seems like a waste to put a tiny distro like Puppy as the only OS onto a 20 gig HDD.

It is strange. Do you have an image of the XP install before hand? If so, you might try putting the XP image onto a new partition of its own and then update grub to see them both. So long as you also have an image of your working puppy, just in case.

Bobby

I think I've finally made sense of what I did to make the cardbus and usb fail after a successful evening install. That night, with everything working but the sound, I tried to get the sound working before giving up and going to bed. Without knowing it, I did get the sound working, but in doing so I disabled the cardbus. So this morning I woke to a puppy install that had sound, but no cardbus. Entering 'acpi=off apm=on' on boot swapped it back to the way it was before I tinkered with it. Having no sound is not a biggie, but I will tinker a bit more and poke around the net to see if there's a way to force the sound card to use a different IRQ/DMA. At least I know how to restore it now.

Bobby