Puppy Boot Parameters: PuppyLinux

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Puppy Boot Parameters

This page lists some of the parameters/arguments you can set on Puppy's boot-up. (Note- these don't apply to early versions of Puppy, especially pre-Puppy2.)

Parameters are passed to Puppy in one of two ways: either by typing an option at the boot-up screen (if Puppy is in 'live' mode), or via one of the bootloaders bootloader files.

For example, if grub is being used and the menu.1st kernel line needs modifying,

kernel /slacko531/vmlinuz acpi=off pmedia=atahd psubdir=slacko531

and if syslinux is used and syslinux.cfg needs modifying,

append initrd=/boot/initrd.gz acpi=off pmedia=atahd psubdir=slacko531

Pfix

pfix allows various options to be selected:

pfix=ram will run Puppy totally in RAM and ignore saved sessions/storage file(s)

pfix=nox will boot Puppy to terminal/commandline (ie no X)

pfix=<n> where <n> is the number of saved sessions to ignore for a multisession-CD

pfix=rdsh will exit to initial ramdisk commandline (do not pivot_root)

pfix=usbcard for booting from USB flash drive via USB 2.0 to PCMCIA adapter

pfix=clean will force a simulated version upgrade (for Puppy 2.13 and later)

pfix=purge will force an even more radical file cleanup (to fix broken system) (for Puppy 2.14 and later)

pfix=#debug may help with debugging

pfix=copy or nocopy controls if main sfs file is loaded (copied) to RAM

If using multiple pfix options, separate them with a comma, e.g. pfix=rdsh,usbcard

NOPCMCIA

Add nopcmcia if you don't want PCMCIA (PC card) drivers and card manager to be started during the boot process.

PKEYS

The keyboard layout for a country. Default is "us".

Choices include: be br cf de dk es fi fr gr hu it jp no pl ru se uk us

See Barry's recent blog post for more on this.

PupSfs

Controls which file is loaded as BaseSfs. Specify full path and filename.

Example- pupsfs=sdb1:/pwary/wary_511.sfs

PupSave files

Puppy's behavior on boot-up depends whether any SaveFile savefiles are found:

If none are found Puppy will load the BaseSFS without any modifications. In many versions the user will be prompted on startup to configure Puppy; also, on shutdown(/reboot) the user is asked whether to create a savefile.

If only one savefile is found it will load automatically.

If more than one is found the user is prompted to select one from a text menu.

Note: the boot files on a multi-session disk work differently from those used for live disk and frugal installs. They look for and make save files differently, see SaveFileMultiSession Save file multi-session for more information.

Psave

Psave allows a user to specify which SaveFile PupSave files to use. This allows the pupsave selection menu to be skipped (shows if more than one savefile is found).

Boot File Search Parameters

First, Puppy tries to detect all interfaces, media and partitions. Then the search for boot files begins.

Pmedia

Specify boot device by interface and/or media-type. This is a search filter.

Omitting this parameter usually results in Puppy correctly locating boot files; however, it can be useful if you are having problems.

Manually specify the boot interface and/or media using one of the following:

usbflash usbhd usbcd ideflash idehd idecd idezip satahd satacd scsihd

Acceptable interfaces include USB, IDE, SATA, and SCSI

Acceptable mediatypes include flash, hard drive (hdd), CD/DVD, and ZIP

Example- PMEDIA=idehd

Note: Use of this parameter can prevent some BIOS from finding Puppy, especially in the case of using USB flash drives - because they are identified inconsistently by various BIOS (as flash, hdd, zip ...). Therefore the user should find out in advance exactly how a particular pc works before adding this parameter.

(Applies to Puppy 2.x and later).

Pdev1

Specifies boot device by partition. This is a search filter.

Example- Pdev1=sda1

Psubdir

Specifies ({device}{type}/path) the location of boot files in the boot partition. If not specified init will look in / and /boot, order-unknown. As of puppy 3.00 this parameter also restricts the boot search for pup_save files: only those in a matching directory will used. This can be used to allow multiple-puppy installation on the same partition to be used without risk of using the wrong one in error. Also see Psubok.

Example- psubdir=boot/puppy216

Psubok

Using psubok=TRUE implies all boot files are in Psubdir AND init may search deeper than one directory level.

Without this setting init init's search for the BaseSfs base sfs will be one directory level deep at most.

In a multiboot scenario, not using this option may lead to an "sfs not found" error. This can be confusing because a user may have their base-sfs file in the same (sub)directory as vmlinuz (kernel) and initrd.