Puppy Linux Windows Installer - LICK v1.3.3 released

[charbaby66]

Great concept, and what I need to set up a frugal or 2 on my box

just tried the beta 3 and Error installing boot loader, not sure what
I did wrong, will retry EDIT: (using tahrpup6.0.2.iso)

EDIT: did retry (as administrator) no joy

[noryb009]

charbaby66: Thanks for trying it out, and I appreciate the bug report. Two things:

1) Are you running Windows 7 32-bit or 64-bit?
2) Download and extract this file [EDIT: link removed], and overwrite the old lick-fltk.exe. If you used the installer, it should be at C:\Program Files (x86)\lick\ (won't have x86 if you are on 32-bit). Run the file and try to install the boot loader. It should create two popups, one will be "Error installing loader!", what does the other say?

Thanks!

[charbaby66]

: Thanks for trying it out, and I appreciate the bug report. Two things:

1) Are you running ..32-or-64-bit?

64-bit

:
2) Download and extract ...and overwrite the old lick-fltk.exe ...Run the file and try to install the boot loader. It should create two popups, one will be "Error installing loader!", what does the other say?

Well.. may have been a different (and much shorter! answer, if I hadn't gotten impatient and decided to create and install my own tahrpup.6.0.2>3.exe as per 1st post ...so I can't tell what it actually was BUT... I got some good feedback for you I think... it works fabulously and I think saved my butt

1. Installed my .exe = grub4dos installed + previously made savefile from usb to C:\<mytahrdir>. Reboot. See 2 choices: Boot from Windows 7 or Boot to Puppy Linux. Test both. Dual boot on NTFS working = good!

2. a) followed your instructions re: LICK v.0.3. Ran as admin. Boot loader popup = No errors ?! well.. = good (?!) Install lhg's groovy new spin PuppyBang via iso http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=99969 b) (test) ran non-admin = popup = You must run as admin = good

3. Reboot. See 3 choices: Boot from Windows 7 or Boot to Puppy Linux or Boot to Puppy = not so good..

4. Boot to 7, to uninstall Tahrpup6. Asked if to remove grub4dos? um..?.. Says if running other Linux versions say No. = Decide not to Just say No (because I want it gone, right? No sweat, I can reinstall. )

5. Reboot. See 3 choices: Boot from Windows 7 or Boot to Puppy Linux or Boot to Puppy = not so good.. Sweat.

6. Boot to 7, find no uninstaller in C:\<mypuppybangdir> like there was in C:\<mytahrdir>. = Panic. Run LICK v.0.3. See Uninstall tab. Think it is to uninstall LICK. Click it anyway. Do I want to uninstall PuppyBang? Proceed. Do I want to uninstall grub4dos?:D Yes= (oh please Yes? Yes, please let this work and remove BOTH entries without calfing my W7 install/boot sector/anything? pretty please?!) LICK popup closes when done. Did it work?
.
7. Reboot. See 1 choice: Boot from Windows 7 Yes! Go back to 2.a)

8. Reboot. See 2 choices: Boot from Windows 7 or Boot to Puppy Linux = Oh yeah, baby, that's frickin' fabulous!! Test both. All good!

Ran here (posting from PupBang)to tell ya OMG I so love puppy and got's me a newb crush on you my developer friend! TYSVM for the help!

Will retry installing my .exe to test if get separate grub4dos entries again. Either way will uninstall and use LICK to reinstall .isos as I actually want 6.0.3 not bang as the rescue/backup pup on sda1 at the moment. I am trying to accomplish a few things, but don't want to break the HD install. I know enough to get by, learned enough to start over if needed, remember enough to be slight dangerous, literate enough to read the forums, smart enough to listen most of the time.I am rusty on what to add to LICK's menu.lst, (disk uuid?, correct partition #'s etc.) but used to copy/edit existing code for each new pup's entry. I am spoiled - using usb installs for so long I need to bone up (pun!) now that I am installing frugal to HD. (EDIT: Found, fixed, resolved.. on to the plan!

(Not trying to hijack this thread, EDIT: started new one http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 0#855120if anyone has Non- LICK advise/tips to accomplish "the plan" feel free to comment there. )

p.s. Sorry about all the emoticons, but I just got so emotional (pun! ha! ) reliving that experience!!)

Either way I'll learn something useful.(EDIT: sure have!) Hopefully will create something useful in the process (if nothing else others may learn from my goofs. ) I hope something in my rambling is useful to you

It's likely it was not a bug, noryb009, it was just me.

*EEited to improve readability, but decided to leave all gratuitous icons

[noryb009]

2. a) followed your instructions re: LICK v.0.3. Ran as admin. Boot loader popup = No errors ?! well.. = good (?!)

Hmm, the issue just went away? Interesting. I'll have to look at installing on systems which never had PLIC installed, then. I have to try out Win10 anyway, I'll see what happens then.

Install lhg's groovy new spin PuppyBang via iso http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=99969 b) (test) ran non-admin = popup = You must run as admin = good

Good. I'm assuming you switched by the UAC popup.

3. Reboot. See 3 choices: Boot from Windows 7 or Boot to Puppy Linux or Boot to Puppy = not so good..

Thanks for pointing this out, I'll have to rename the option ("Boot to LICK Loader", maybe?)

4. Boot to 7, to uninstall Tahrpup6. Asked if to remove grub4dos? um..?.. Says if running other Linux versions say No. = Decide not to Just say No (because I want it gone, right? No sweat, I can reinstall. )

5. Reboot. See 3 choices: Boot from Windows 7 or Boot to Puppy Linux or Boot to Puppy = not so good.. Sweat.

Ya, this is another limitation of PLIC - it's awkward to manage the boot loader. Once the uninstaller runs, you don't want a run-this-to-remove-the-loader.exe hanging around, and I don't think people will download another file just to uninstall it. The "most correct" way right now to remove the loader would be to reinstall and reuninstall PLIC. But it's fixed in LICK, at least.

6. Boot to 7, find no uninstaller in C:\<mypuppybangdir> like there was in C:\<mytahrdir>. = Panic. Run LICK v.0.3. See Uninstall tab. Think it is to uninstall LICK.

Interesting, I'll have to reconsider the design of the program. Maybe remove tabs and have everything visible? This shows the current design isn't working.

Click it anyway. Do I want to uninstall PuppyBang? Proceed. Do I want to uninstall grub4dos?:D Yes= (oh please Yes? Yes, please let this work and remove BOTH entries without calfing my W7 install/boot sector/anything? pretty please?!)

That's the great thing about Lin'n'win, which PLIC/LICK is based on - it is very hard to ruin the windows install.

LICK popup closes when done. Did it work?
.
7. Reboot. See 1 choice: Boot from Windows 7 Yes! Go back to 2.a)

I'm not sure why it worked. The way LICK looks at the loaders, it should only detect the LICK one, not the PLIC one. I'll have to look at this.

8. Reboot. See 2 choices: Boot from Windows 7 or Boot to Puppy Linux = Oh yeah, baby, that's frickin' fabulous!! Test both. All good!

Great to hear you got it working in the end. Thank you so much for the post, I'll find the bugs so future users won't have to go through all this.

I am rusty on what to add to LICK's menu.lst, (disk uuid?, correct partition #'s etc.) but used to copy/edit existing code for each new pup's entry. I am spoiled - using usb installs for so long I need to bone up (pun!) now that I am installing frugal to HD.

LICK actually uses lickmenu.lst, it works exactly the same. It's pretty self-explanatory, and it's easy to see what needs to be changed if you have 2 different ISOs installed via LICK.

Thanks again for the bug reports, and good luck with your plan!

[tigersong]

@norby: Is it a GUI now? If not, I'll just learn the command line, no big deal...

[noryb009]

tigersong: PLIC, in the first post, always had a GUI. LICK, the beta, has a GUI (lick-fltk), but it doesn't (yet) work for Win 95 and 98.

[tigersong]

Thanks. I'm running Windows 7; the only connection I have to '95 is wanting to play Riven and The Dig.

[charbaby66]

Hmm, the issue just went away? Interesting. I'll have to look at installing on systems which never had PLIC installed, then. I have to try out Win10 anyway, I'll see what happens then.

No I think when I did this from OP:

ADVANCED: Creating your own PLIC installer. To make your puppy into an .exe installer,..

I had a PLIC installed right? Older LinNWin? Not sure, but your LNW splash screen was prettier I think. I did not attempt using LICK again until after I uninstalled my PLIC via it's installer, so the issue may have uninstalled itself instead of just going away. Ugh, Win10 everything 8 should have had with less privacy added!

Good. I'm assuming you switched by the UAC popup.

Naw, just closed it. I already re-installed bang via LICK, I just wanted to see if I may have/could have installed non-admin is all. Thinkin' maybe that's how I broke my PLIC install, but can't think if it said needed admin or not..

Thanks for pointing this out, I'll have to rename the option ("Boot to LICK Loader", maybe?)

Maybe, for continuity naming-wise for newbs who don't realise that new LNW window is part of LICK /installs the loader, but how many doofuses like me will end up with more than 2 boot loaders installed?

Ya, this is another limitation of PLIC - it's awkward to manage the boot loader. Once the uninstaller runs, you don't want a run-this-to-remove-the-loader.exe hanging around, and I don't think people will download another file just to uninstall it. The "most correct" way right now to remove the loader would be to reinstall and reuninstall PLIC. But it's fixed in LICK, at least.

Yeah, that .exe unnerved me.

Interesting, I'll have to reconsider the design of the program. Maybe remove tabs and have everything visible? This shows the current design isn't working.

No, It's fine, I was in panic mode, and was unsure, a click was all it took (:idea: or just add the word Linux or something to the tab title if you must )

That's the great thing about Lin'n'win, which PLIC/LICK is based on - it is very hard to ruin the windows install.

Good to know, I had a dual boot set up for at least a year on the craptop via grub4dos as per my last post that calfed the access to my ext2/3/4 partitioned pups after a power outage but still let me access my NTFS /W7 /Linux pups. That's partly why I went with usb not HD frugal installs.

I'm not sure why it worked. The way LICK looks at the loaders, it should only detect the LICK one, not the PLIC one. I'll have to look at this

Aw, please improve not remove this, I think it's a feature not a bug!

I'll find the bugs so future users won't have to go through all this.

Not as many as you seem to think, I'm sure! I'm a big LICK fan now.

LICK actually uses lickmenu.lst, it works exactly the same. It's pretty self-explanatory, and it's easy to see what needs to be changed if you have 2 different ISOs installed via LICK.

Yeah, I caught that, but used to the other term, and I think the PLIC did use menu.lst .So I will read a bit more and figure out what to put in to run pups living on ext/2/3/4 with my NTFS kennel/W7. I was used to um.. hd0,0; chainloader and such being in there, but can't remember how I had it before. Also some pups want/need the disk uuid now I think. (I know how to find mine just not where and when to put it.)

Thanks again for the fine work, and the quick response

[noryb009]

so the issue may have uninstalled itself instead of just going away

You still faced an issue, which could appear in the future. I'll see if I can reproduce it.

Win10 everything 8 should have had with less privacy added!

I just finished trying out Win10 (luckily it's the same bootloader as 8, so just a few lines of extra code needed), that's a good way to describe it. I like it, but not enough to make me change back from Linux, though.

I think it's a feature not a bug!

It uninstalled something that shouldn't have been installed. While it was good in this case, it's still a bug.

[charbaby66]

noryb009, Thanks again for the pride you take in your work.

I just finished trying out Win10 (luckily it's the same bootloader as 8, so just a few lines of extra code needed), that's a good way to describe it. I like it, but not enough to make me change back from Linux, though.

LOL I should hope not! You know which Win I liked best??? 98SE!! still have it somewhere

So, this is (EDIT: not as ugly as I figured this out) but it works in my lickmenu.lst. (tested 2 Pups from sda3-ext3 & sda5-ext4 & I'm posting from Tahr6.0.2 sda5 now.) Guess the ol' gal still has got it goin' on!! ) now I can link out wine, fiddle with NF, un/squash me an .sfs, & do some remastering just a lil bit easier with 2 emergency Pups on sda1

(lol gots me some watchdogs by my Windows now! thanks to you)

Sample code:

title Tahr Puppy 6.0.2 upgraded >3 sda5
uuid 88566392-da9f-438c-b0d4-c9ee66f75fe8
find --set-root --ignore-floppies /tahrpup/vmlinuz
kernel /tahrpup/vmlinuz pfix=fsck PMEDIA=idehd PDEV1=sda5 psubdir=/tahrpup
initrd /tahrpup/initrd.gz
boot

Thanks again, buddy! <bark bark> The plan continues...

[noryb009]

LICK v0.3.1 is released. I had "not too much changed", then looked at the change log. I had "it's almost release candidate quality", then looked at the TODO list.

The biggest change is Windows ME and 10 support. It now supports Windows 95 - 10.

You can install v0.3.1 over v0.3, and it can coexist with PLIC. If you currently have v0.2.0 or before installed, make sure you uninstall all ISOs and remove the boot loader before installing.

Changelog:
- Windows ME support
- Windows 10 support
- check boot loader time out, set to 5 if unreasonable (3-30 seconds is "reasonable")
- ensure boot-loader install to fixed hard drive (distros can still be installed to any drive)
- rename boot menu items to "Start LICK Boot Loader"
- make install distro code more atomic
- small GUI changes
- small bug fixes

Known bugs/TODO:
- Display of current version number
- Extra error popup in GUI - DONE
- Needs README
- Menu documentation
- Back up menu before regenerating (and rework plugins)

[charbaby66]

LICK v0.3.1 is released.

hey buddy quick ?? for you. Gonna mess around with lappy during bus ride. Have a usb case & lappy hd in it, with older series 5 pups on it, used to use something not LICK to boot it. It may have XP on it. May not have wifi all the way, but enough to see your reply once I get to the depot I'm out the door as soon as I post this.

Can I use LICK to boot usb hd, if I plug into my existing install (W7 & 2 tahrs on sda1 NTFS; fat32 shared on sda2, ext3 on sda3; ext4 on sda5) have it add the bootloader needed to run XP & a pup on sdb1, etc etc as well? It likely has... grub2 maybe even lilo?

Has one of the few XP's I have all updated before no support, those seem to work better than an XP installed/updated after support ended. I used to transfer files from it when fixing virii for friends, and would like to keep it,
but... I might kill off the XP anyways so no worry if I can't do, or if I break it. It'll just start life anew as a pup reborn. Without the XP, I don't have to worry, I can fix lick.lst. XP doesn't scare me, I can fix it to boot & or change boot drive in BIOS if needed, to just bypass the W7 and putter..

I trust LICK to modify boot loader on the W7, I ain't touchin' that thing...

.

[noryb009]

Yes, you should be able to add "USB HDD" to your current menu, and take you into whichever boot loader is on the HDD. This is known as chainloading.

This would likely work:

Code: Select all

title USB HDD
find --set-root --ignore-floppies /a/file/on/HDD
chainloader ()+1
boot

You can look at other examples here.

[noryb009]

It's been a while since I posted, so I figure I should post an update. I've slowed down development, since I've been busy with some other things recently. I should be able to release LICK soon, in the next few weeks or so.

I have been able to add a few more features, including NT 4.0 support, moving the `entry' folder to common app data (so you can run LICK from anywhere on your computer), moving grub.cfg to the Windows drive (found in, eg. C:/lickgrub.cfg), and not regenerating the menu any time something changes (so you can modify it, and your changes are saved).

Once I test these features a bit more, I'll send out another beta, or perhaps an RC.

[noryb009]

LICK v0.4 is released. I'm hoping I can call this a release candidate... Not sure if that's too optimistic.

There are two big changes: first, data is saved in the common app data folder. This is found at "C:\Program Data" for Windows 9X/ME/Vista/7/8/10, while it is at "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data" for NT/XP. This change means either you must uninstall all distributions before installing v0.4.
Second, the menu structure has changed. You can now manually edit the menu file directly, without your changes getting overridden.

Changelog:
- Save data in common app data folder
- Allow menu to be edited by hand
- Move grub.cfg to C drive for grub2 (and rename to lickgrub.cfg)
- Add readme file
- Windows NT 4.0 support
- Bug fixes and code clean up

[anewuser]

Tested LICK V0.4 on windows 7. Had installed previously your windows executable with tarhpup6.0 non pae, so I already had a second choice on the boot menu (which installed properly after a few errors)

With lick a third option was created on the win7 boot menu. I installed slack5.7 non pae, and librepup. When I choose the lick boot menu entry, they do show and load up without problems.

Very nice, easy, and lazy way to install to hdd/pendrive. Congratulations.

[Wognath]

Hello noryb009,
Thanks for Lick! I'm posting to report success with a Windows 10 machine.

My daughter just bought a Toshiba Satellite C55-B5240X laptop with W10 which she wants to dual boot. Since the HD came with 4 primary partitions, the least disruptive course was to install Linux to ntfs partition. We used Lick v0.4 to install Fatdog-701 from the iso, and it worked perfectly. Out of curiosity I turned on secure boot and followed prompts to enroll Lick-grub's secure boot key with no problem.

We had first tried Fatdog700.exe from your collection of Windows installers, but it did not work with W10. We also installed Sulu with Lick, but it won't boot with boot mode UEFI. I think rerwin is working on this...I'll wait and see. It boots with boot mode=CSM, but then Windows won't boot.

Thanks again for a useful tool.

[noryb009]

Good to hear, anewuser and Wognath!

I believe the problem with Sulu is from their lack of UEFI support (just a few options in the kernel config). Future puplets will hopefully have this option enabled.

[noryb009]

LICK v0.5 has been released. Big thanks to Wognath for identifying some usability issues, most of which have been addressed in this release.

I hope to release this as a stable v1.0 after a bit of testing. Let me know if you have any issues with it.

You shouldn't need to reinstall any distributions if you upgrade.

Change log:
- support UNC paths (eg. network shares not mounted on a drive)
- add support for different disributions (not currently used, mostly for forwards compatibility)
- close progress bar before success message box
- support fatdog's "savefile=none", it doesn't recognize "pfix=ram"
- code cleanup

[noryb009]

LICK v1.0 has been released, see the release for more information.

This is simply a version bump to v0.5. No functional changes have been made.

As always, if you encounter problems, feel free to add an issue on the github project, post here, or PM me.

With this, PLIC has been deprecated. No new versions of PLIC installers will be released by me.

Below is the original post in this thread, for reference.

Install Puppy Linux on Windows
Most people who come here are probably looking for this link, hosting a Windows installer for the most recent official Puppy Linux, as well as a few derivatives. There is also a mirror, provided by archive.org.

Windows installers for a few Puppy Linux derivatives:
Italian Puppy: Multiple versions
Sagelive: 511
Quickset Wary: 511
Japanese Precise: 571 | 550 | 420
Puppy Linux Turbopup Xtreme: 420
Puppy Linux 525 | 520

Project info
Puppy Linux Installer Creator (PLIC) is a set of NSIS scripts that can create an EXE that can install Puppy Linux onto a Windows system without touching the MBR. It follows the Lin'N'Win method.

PLIC installers work on all versions of Windows, from 95 to 8, except ME. On a Windows 8 system, ensure fast boot is disabled, secure boot is disabled and the UEFI set to Legacy (BIOS) mode.

PLIC installers can install one version of Puppy Linux each. Each installer includes a simple uninstaller. You can have any number of PLIC installers installed.

ADVANCED: Creating your own PLIC installer
To make your puppy into an .exe installer, you must use Windows or wine. Install NSIS onto it (select all the plugins when asked). Then, unzip the PLIC scripts and follow the instructions in README.txt.

Big thanks to shinobar and mikeb for windows 7 help, seeker for creating the original windows installer, and Brian Grainger for the Lin'N'Win guide.

View the project on Github