flash-Puppy

flash-Puppy

This page applies to running Puppy on any bootable USB storage media, such as flash memory, Zip drive and hard drive.

My "first take" with installing Puppy was on a tiny USB flash card, as I really like the idea of having all my personal data and the operating system in something that I can carry in a shirt pocket or wallet. In theory, I can then boot Puppy on any PC with a USB socket. In fact, as I chose a Compact Flash (CF) card, which has an inbuilt hard-drive controller, I can obtain an adaptor to plug my card inside a computer as a hard drive replacement (so you don't need a USB socket). Here's a snapshot of the CF card:

I also purchased a USB CF reader. The 128M CF card cost me A$79 and the reader cost A$35 (Australian Dollars). I noticed a 128M USB Pen Drive selling for A$79, which is a cheaper option, but I haven't tried it.

Simple as anything to go into the BIOS setup during power-up and change the second boot device to "USB ZIP" (Award BIOS).

How to get flash-Puppy

You need three files; image.gz, vmlinuz and syslinux.zip.

Go to the Puppy download page

Of course, there is the usual complete waiver of responsibility. You use Puppy entirely at your own risk.

How to install flash-Puppy.

You will have these files:

image.gz	This is Puppy. This is what gets uncompressed into the 48M ramdisk
vmlinuz	This is the Linux operating system itself, called the kernel, that will also be loaded into RAM
syslinux.cfg	This is a small text file, with configuration information for Syslinux.
syslinux, syslinux.com, syslinux.doc	These are all part of Syslinux. Read the syslinux.doc file to find out how to load the files onto the Flash card and set it up as a bootable card.

In a nutshell, you copy the three files image.gz, vmlinuz and syslinux.cfg to the CF card. You then execute syslinux.com* in a DOS box in Windows (Windows XP calls it the "commandline") or syslinux* in a Linux terminal.

If you have a relatively modern Linux distribution, it should have automatically recognised your USB CF card, and if you have it plugged into the first USB socket (the one closest to the motherboard -- most motherboards have two USB sockets), it will most likely be avilable as /dev/sda1.

...clarifying that, if the flash card is the only USB device then it doesn't matter what socket you plug it into, it will show up as /dev/sdax, where x is the partition number, which will be 1 if there is only one partition on the card (which is the case, unless you have repartitioned it). If you have two USB devices, the first will be sda1, the second sdb1.

HINT: don't use a flash multi-reader. Use a single CF card reader. My first purchase was an optical mouse with two readers, a SM (Smart Media) reader and a CF reader (that is, it has two sockets, for each type of flash card). Bad move -- my PC BIOS can't boot off it, and I was not able to get any Linux distribution to properly recognise it. It does work under Windows, as a driver is supplied.

MOUSE: Do not use a USB mouse. Linux has problems with these. Puppy requires that you have a serial or PS/2 mouse. Note, I do intend to investigate this and hopefully get a USB mouse working with Puppy.

Windows may automatically recognise the USB CF card reader. My Windows 98 didn't, but I had a driver that came with the reader and then it was fine; the reader shows up as drive E: (in my case).

To install Puppy, follow these simple steps. For Windows NT/2000/XP make sure that you are logged in as Administrator. Inside a DOS box, type this ("C>" is the MSDOS prompt. Substitute appropriate drive letter for "e"):

C> copy image.gz e:
C> copy vmlinuz e:
C> copy syslinux.cfg e:
C> lock e:
C> syslinux.com e:
C> unlock e:

Read the syslinux.doc file before doing this. Note, you do not have to format the flash card (I have never formatted a flash card, and don't know if there are any complications to it). Better not to. If you have previously used the card, delete any files on it, and maybe use the DOS/Windows Scandisk program to check it.

Note also, someone has told me that Windows XP doesn't have the "lock" program, so don't use it. Read the sylinux.doc file, which mentions this also.

Any time in the future you can upgrade Puppy, and there is no need to go through all those steps. Just download the latest image.gz (this is called the root filesystem and is Puppy himself) and copy onto the flash card. Ditto, if there is a new matching Linux O.S. kernel (the file vmlinuz), copy that too. ...can upgrading be any simpler than this?