on a CD
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on a CD |
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Puppy boots off a CDROM remarkably fast, about 25-30 seconds from the Isolinux boot prompt to the X graphics screen running and Fvwm95 window manager fully loaded, and about 35 seconds if the home device is a floppy disk. Basically, this is because the ISO is only 34M.
You have two choices, either download three files and build the ISO yourself, or download the ready-to-go ISO.
You download the same image.gz and vmlinuz as for flash-Puppy (see flash-Puppy page for description), but you also download isolinux.zip, that contains makeiso*, makeiso.bat*, isolinux.htm, isolinux.cfg and isolinux.bin.
Read further down this page how to build an ISO file.
An ISO file is a single file that you burn onto a CD, then reboot the PC and off you go. All that I have done is follow the steps below to create the cd-puppy.iso file. Download:
Then use your favourite CD burner software and burn cd-puppy.iso onto a CD/R.
This section and the next is for those who would like to build their own ISO.
Puppy now has a "Remaster live-Puppy CD" program. This is a script that enables you to customise Puppy and burn another live-Puppy CD.
"Remaster live-Puppy CD" is very easy to use:
...a new live-Puppy CD will be burnt.
Live-Puppy has a file called "isolinux.cfg" that can be customised. The "Remaster live-Puppy CD" program will guide you through this, but you may also like to read about it on the Configuring Puppy page (for booting from a USB Flash card, the configuration file is "syslinux.cfg" and these notes apply to that as well).
After you have downloaded the files, arrange them into this directory structure:
~/puppy/makeiso ~/puppy/isolinux-builds/image.gz and vmlinuz and isolinux.bin and isolinux.cfg
Then all you have to do is this:
# cd ~/puppy # ./makeiso
Lo and behold, the directory ~/puppy/ will now contain cd-puppy.iso, and you use your favourite CD-burner program to burn it to a CD.
Note that just about all Linux distributions will have installed the cdrtools (also known as cdrecord) package by default, which means that the program mkisofs* will be available, which is needed by the makeiso* script.
You need to download the files as described above, but you will also need to download cdrtools, which contains the mkisofs.exe program. Download the latest precompiled binary from here:
ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/cdrecord/alpha/win32/
Unzip it. The two files of interest are mkisofs.exe and cygwin1.dll. Arrange the files in this directory structure (where "~" means wherever your personal home directory is):
~/puppy/makeiso.bat ~/puppy/mkisofs.exe and cygwin1.dll ~/puppy/isolinux-builds/image.gz and vmlinuz and isolinux.bin and isolinux.cfg
Then all you have to do is this:
C> cd ~/puppy
...the Windows/DOS commandline doesn't accept this syntax, but you know what I mean!
C> makeiso.bat
Lo and behold, the directory ~/puppy folder will now contain cd-puppy.iso, and you use your favourite CD-burner program to burn it to a CD.
Puppy will automatically create a 128M file on your hard drive. This file is actually a ext2 filesystem, and will be mounted on /root -- it becomes the "home device".
Note that versions of Puppy prior to v0.7.6 did not do this: they required that a floppy disk be inserted, to be used as the home device. Notes for earlier versions:
live-Puppy v0.7.4 and earlier:
Ideally, you should have your PC BIOS set so that it tries to boot from CDROM first, then floppy disk, then the hard drive. Then with a blank formatted floppy disk inserted and the live-Puppy CDROM inserted, reboot the PC.
The floppy disk must be a normal blank (no files) MSDOS formatted disk, as it is when purchased.
If the PC BIOS setup tries to boot from floppy first, and you are not able to change it for some reason, just watch carefully when the CDROM starts to boot, then insert the floppy.
Or, don't use a floppy disk at all. But then you won't have any permanent changes. It is important to understand that all configuration files as well as your personal data files get stored in your home device, so if you go through the process of configuring your email account, or PPP dialup, it will be saved permanently if the floppy disk is there.
IMPORTANT: Do not remove the floppy disk when Puppy is running. When you have finished, shutdown from Fvwm95 via the logout menu, or if X isn't running type "poweroff" at the prompt and after the system has shutdown then remove the floppy disk. However, the CDROM is not used after Puppy has booted, so you can remove it any time.
Some guidance when running Puppy for first and second times is found on the main page.
Well, you might like to read the "Configuring Puppy" page. In particular, you may wish to remaster the live-Puppy CD. For example, live-Puppy creates a 128M file called "pup0" on your hard drive, but you may want it to be bigger, say 512M.
Notes for v0.7.4 and earlier:
If you like Puppy and want to keep using, the floppy disk is not so good, as it is only 1440K bytes, and slow. You absolutely don't want to use the Sylpheed newsreader, as it will create a 1M cache and fill your floppy immediately. Ditto for GTKatalog, the file-find and cataloger program, as it scans the filesystems and creates a large catalog cache file. The floppy is ok for evaluation, and you should be able to use the Links web browser and Sylpheed email client. Past the evaluation phase, create a msdos (or vfat, minix, ext2, ext3) partition somewhere else for your home (see the "Boot customisation" section above --the script "Remaster live-Puppy CD" will enable you to burn another live-Puppy CD customised for whatever partition you want to mount on /root, plus other options).
...of course, once you have a hard disk partition for your home, you might as well put Puppy himself onto it, rather than boot off a CDROM (that is, boot device and home device become the same). However, for that you will need to install a bootloader, such as Grub or Lilo.
For live-Puppy v0.7.6 you are off and running right away, and you don't
really need to do any "installation" of Puppy. Just boot off
the CD every time. You can take that CD to any PC and be productive right
away, no install.
This is slightly invasive, as Puppy does create a file on the PC's hard
drive, however this is outweighed by the shear convenience.
If you wish to investigate a more permanent installation of Puppy onto the hard drive, take a look at the hard-Puppy page.
(c) Copyright Barry Kauler 2003
http://www.goosee.com/explorer