[SOLVED] difficulty installing Grub bootloader in Puppy

Brant · 10-03-2018, 08:44 PM

I have done a full install of Tahr 6.0.2 on an elderly Macbook (32bit) but I am stymied over installing the bootloader.
I have tried more than once, usually with the Legacy GRUB Config 2013 because I assumed the Grub4Dos config was for dual-boot installations.

I use "Expert Mode", because "Simple Mode" only uses sda and sda1, and my hard-drive is identified as sda2. I have set the flag for that partition to "boot".
In Gparted the hard-drive is shown in the top-right as /dev/sda and is shown as partitioned into:
/dev/sda2 73.56 GiB
unallocated 1.00 MiB
/dev/sda3 991.00MiB

In "Expert Mode", I chose the following settings:

Target for Stage 1 (hd0) I left this unchanged, thinking it the equivalent to sda.
Partition for Stage 2 sda2 I chose this, because that is how the partition is identified in Gparted and as the mounted file.
Target for Stage 2 (hd0,2) I chose this, thinking it the equivalent to sda2.

WHen I shut-down and restart, a white screen showing a question mark appears, which with a Mac I believe indicates that it can't find the bootloader. Obviously my choices as listed above are wonky — does anyone have better ideas?

Thanks

whansard · 10-03-2018, 09:26 PM

i use refind boot manager on my old 32 bit macbook.

yancek · 10-04-2018, 07:13 AM

Quote:

Target for Stage 2 (hd0,2) I chose this, thinking it the equivalent to sda2.

That is incorrect. Grub Legacy counts both hard drives and partitions from zero so if you want it pointing to sda2, the correct entry would be (hd0,1). The Grub Legacy Manual on installing Grub at the link below.

https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/ma...-GRUB-natively

Your hard drive is sda not sda2, sda2 is a partition and from the looks of your output, probably the root filesystem partition.

Brant · 10-04-2018, 03:30 PM

So, I tried again, with the following settings:

Target for Stage 1 (hd0) I left this unchanged.
Partition for Stage 2 sda2
Target for Stage 2 (hd0,1)

and still got the questionmark.

I then tried again, with:

Target for Stage 1 (hd0,1)
Partition for Stage 2 sda2
Target for Stage 2 (hd0,1)

and...still a question mark. Damn. I'll think about this, but any other suggestions will be welcome.

colorpurple21859 · 10-04-2018, 05:17 PM

try it manually.
mount your puppy partition, go to /boot/grub folder and make it sure it has a stage1 and stage2 file, a menu.lst, a devicemap file, and about seven more stage files with different names. If they are missing the files can be copied from the /usr/lib/grub/x386 folder. The menu.lst you will have to create if it doesn't exist.
open a terminal and issue the following commands

Code:

grub
root (hd0,1)   #the tab key will give choices for drive and partitions
setup (hd0)
quit

yancek · 10-05-2018, 08:06 AM

You need to mount the partition on which the boot files exist (if in fact they do?) and check the menu.lst file to see that the entries are correct. Installing Grub in this manner isn't going to create a new menu.lst.

Brant · 10-08-2018, 01:32 PM

A friend suggested I should try MacPup, wondering if it was tweaked to be happier with Macbooks; I suspect that MacPup's intent is only to look more like a Mac, but in any case, the only result was to show the same problems (albeit with different names) when I went to install the Grub.

I finally got my nerve up to use Gparted to reformat the hard-drive, created a partition that I named sda1, and installed MacPup that way, and it worked. Oh the relief!

Thanks all.

I finally decided to install Tahrpup. I would have liked to try Xenial 7.5, but it continues to balk at the opening screen.

Mike_Walsh · 10-28-2018, 08:19 PM

@ Brant:-

I can confirm that MacPup's intent was to 'emulate' the appearance/ basic behaviour of a Mac.....but there the similarity ends. It was based on a 're-master' of Puppy 412 (one of the older, T2-based 'builds') by one of our oldest members, Karl Godt, from Heimlich in Germany.

Karl is 'old-school'. He doesn't like the Puppy 'frugal' install at all; to him, if it's not a 'full' install, it's NOT installed. (It's been pointed out to him, on many occasions, by many different members, that he's missing out on some of Pup's best features by persisting in this view-point.....but Karl remains adamant, and will NOT be 'swayed'!)

The 'full' install of Puppy is the only one that will behave, even remotely, like a conventional, mainstream distro.....but to the majority of Puppians, that's not a Puppy. It's an abortion....because it was never, ever intended to run like that.

Mike.