I wiped the HD with Deban and booted to the puppy live cd, and ran the universal installer. Becasue I thought I had to have a swap file, i created a 256MB swap drive on dev\sda1 and installed Puppy on sda2. I used grup to install on the sda2 drive.

This is my 3 or 4 try. Each time I end up with a blinking cursor and can't boot from the hard drive. What am I doing wrong? Do I have to start over again.

Also, I have a Dlink DWL-650+ PCMCIA card? Is there any way to make this work? (wireless for my notebook)

I have used Linux in the past, but it was years ago.

Celmo

Do you mean to say that you installed the Grub bootloader to sda2, the partition where you installed Puppy? If you wiped your drive and have no other Operating System, you won't be able to boot. You need the stage1 file of Grub in the master boot record. You have that option during the installation. If you didn't choose it, you won't be able to boot unless you have another OS with a bootloader.

Assuming you now only have Puppy on the machine, re-install Grub by putting your Puppy CD in the drive, let it load and open a terminal and as root user type:

grub (this gets you to grub prompt: grub>)type:

root (hd0,1)
setup (hd0)
quit

This should install Grub to the mbr. If you have other OS's on the machine , post the output of fdisk -l command to get assistance.

Thank you so much! It installed, but I had to use sd0. However, when I boot the laptop, I get a Linux screen, but it asks me if I want to boot from SD1 or SD2 and other options like install Grub, etc. Neither actually boots up though. It just goes to a black screen. How do I actually get it to boot up completely, and especially without those options?

Thank you,
celmo

Maybe this install video can help you out.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=201565&search_id=1358540782#201565

That video is very clear, but I have another question before I begin (again.) Is there any need to do any dos partion creation or formating or can I absolutely start with a wiped drive? (no dual boots, etc wanted)

Thanks,
Chris

The box I am using right now does Not have anything but [swap, hda1]. and [puppy, hda1]. I simply used gparted on the live cd, made hda1 bootable, then the normal install wizard, select grub, put it in the MBR, and viola!! Being a gui type guy, I would boot the live CD [puppy pfix=ram] to re-run the grub boot loader wizard, Done it before, and it works good.. HTH. RP

I believe you need to create partitions and filesystems before install. I'm not sure you have that option with Puppy?? You can download GParted or Parted Magic and use either to do this.

Where did you use sd0?

What? Do you still have your Installation CD in the drive after installing. I don't think you should be gettin a screen like that.

Shoot me dead!!! After re-reading [thanks yancek] I would guess that you have been running puppy from the cd, and Saving, at the end of your session. That is the only way I have ever got such a message as described "but it asks me if I want to boot from SD1 or SD2 and other options like install Grub, etc"..
Start from scratc.... Boot from the cd. At the "pause" type puppy [space] pfix=ram [enter]
After boot run GParted, [it is under menu/system] wipe the drive, apply, setup partitions, apply, make the partition you want to use bootable. apply, quit. Run Install Wizard, choose grub, put it in MBR. reboot or shutdown... Do Not Save!. Remove cd. Comes up w/ grub screen. Choose your install and all is golden.
Sorry so long.
RP

In traditional Linux books you read that you need three partition for Linux:
The boot Partition
The Linux Partition
and the Swap Partition

As the boot partition I use either Windows or the Linux Partition itself.
The boot Partition has to be a primary partition with the bootflag set.
The Linux partition can also be in an extended Partition in form of a virtual partition (I format to ext3)
The Swap partition should be a primary partition again with the size of the double of RAM or 1GB.


Another point you have to think over is how did you install grub?
Into the Masterbootrecord or as Puppy suggest to the superbootblock of the linux partition? (when you have also a windoof as bootpartition
If you did it into the superbootblock you will have to open the Console and write:
dd if=/dev/hdaX of=/tmp/bootsec.lin bs=512 count=1

The X is the number of the partition

then coppy
bootsec.lin from Temp-folder to C:/
change C:/boot.ini to : c:\bootsec.lin="Grub > Puppy"
and adapt Menue.1st at the Linuxpartition found in Boot/Grub/..

This is the best way but if this seems too complicated follow
http://www.puppylinux.org/manuals/pu...-install-puppy
step by step


When Windows: defrag
LiveCD
GParted : reduce Windows partition, create Linux partition and swap partition, format, bootflag
run univetrsal installer and grub install
make changings I told you above
be happy becouse it works fine


if no windows
LiveCD
GParted : create Linux partition and swap partition, format, bootflag
run univetrsal installer and grub install to masterbootrecord !
change menue.lst
be happy becouse it works fine

1 members found this post helpful.

dev/sda is the MBR of the drive

if installing grub to partition only it would be /dev/sda1, sda2,etc

didnt read the whole thread
but your gonna dual boot puppy and windows?

when you run the grub the first thing it will ask is where to install the grub files, which will be sda2 if puppy is on the second partition. give it a few minutes then it will ask you to where to install grub bootloader, that is where you select mbr (master boot record)

1 members found this post helpful.

Yes, that was the step I was missing. It works except one thing so far. As I boot up, I get a blue box on screen that looks like this:

Linux (on/dev/sda1)
Install Grub to floppy
Install Grub on Linux (on /dev/SDA1)
- For help..
- For usage examples..

I tried the install to Linux partition again, but that didn't change anything. Is there anyway to eliminate this halt and boot to SDA1 immediately?

Thanks.

That is your grub boot menu. to boot directly edit your /boot/grub/menu.lst file and there should be a line that looks something like this:
#timeout 30
remove the # sign and change the 30 to 3

1 members found this post helpful.

That worked! Thank you so much. It boots great. Now, shouldn't I start a new thread regarding how to get the PCMCI DWL-650+ card to work with WPA/TPK?