Porteus

I have a couple questions that have been nagging at me about laptop booting --

My recent Toshiba laptop came with 3 partitions -- sda[1,2,3] -- and the sda1 partition is 'hidden' -- think it shows in cfdisk as type -- hidden ntfs. Win7 is installed on sda2, and there's also a small 8gb sda3, again hidden ntfs. Think it has some sort of restore images.

Whatever, the first sda1 partition is marked bootable -- so I suspect that anything that refers to 'mbr' is talking about that real first disk sector. But, drive C: is sda2. So ... if doing things on such a layout from a windows.boot.bat file, do drive letters correspond to disk partitions in the same way as on a conventional desktop layout?

I just looked at bootinst.bat in V09, the line that runs syslinux to make a device bootable -- and it looks to me as if it is still using windows drive letters -- so how can it write to the mbr if it's in a hidden partition?

If this is a real problem, then it would probably affect a lot of laptop users. I dunno if commercial desktops come with similar disk layouts?

Forgive me if this is already well covered.

@Burninbush

the first sda1 partition is marked bootable -- so I suspect that anything that refers to 'mbr' is talking about that real first disk sector.

Your suspicious is true

So ... if doing things on such a layout from a windows.boot.bat file, do drive letters correspond to disk partitions in the same way as on a conventional desktop layout?

boot installer to HDD should have nothing to deal with drive letters - as you are mention right above

I just looked at bootinst.bat in V09, theng line that runs syslinux to make a device bootable -- and it looks to me as if it is still using windows drive letters -- so how can it write to the mbr if it's in a hidden partition?

As I remeber - Tomas M would never have puirpose to make his batch scripts for HDD installation
Except of LILO installation script - but it never assume multiboot

One possible way is instead batch file use Visial Basic script for HDD install - vbs script could work with Windows registry and could fetch many information regarging HDD partitions and could run at many versions of Windows.

Posted after 2 days 18 hours 40 minutes 4 seconds:
Updated.

Added 2 scipts:

grub2xp.bat - to install Porteus to HDD together with Windows XP/NT/2000/Windows 2003

This script I checked, works fine

grub2win7.bat - to install to HDD together with Windows 7/Vista

Have no possability to check this script- have no Windows 7 installed near me or time to install.

Please try and test this 2 scripts.

It do not touch Windows bootloader and just add grub4dos to Windows boot manager menu - so if the second one do not work - it make no harm to Windows boot

See first post for details

No joy with win7 installer.

I put boot & porteus on C: drive.
Opened command prompt as admin
cd C:\boot\grubinst
start ./grub2win7.bat
(here i get error about no binaries found. Fix path in script)
If instead i issue: ./grub2win7.bat it runs but finds no drives at all.

Regarding path

in notepad editor grub2win7.bat

in beggining of file you see

could be modify it in such way
But I think - some checking are needed

Regarding drives - this is matter of debbuging

Which i cannot do now (:

@falcony
i've tried you're grubinst, like all the version of remix the result are
zip, nada nihil and i'm giving it a last try with alpha.

with the comp that i use, your grub2usb gave me this error
libintl3.dll try to reinstall again (something like that anyway)
hope this help

BTW my machine is using SIS chipset if that help.
CHEERS

FWIW, grubinst.bat doesn't work here, on either a win2k box or a win7 laptop. Gives a 'you don't have permission' error even though I'm on as adminstrator on both machines, and after using windows disk services to partition and format the usbstick -- don't see how permissions could be an issue. Grubinst.sh works, but only on my two puters here that will boot any sort of usb booter,all the scripts work on those puters, but none work on my 2nd desktop which is very fussy.

I have had =some= success booting on the fussy machine using Puppy 5.2 -- which has some complicated usb-preparation scripts, maybe using ldlinux? And making some very odd partition setups, e.g., an sda1 and an sda4 with the sda4 being the bootable part. Needs some study.

@burninbush
Yes, what struck me as odd is it ldlinux.sys is at root directory instead of /boot and on this and previous puter won't boot more than 2Gb stick.
If they use G4D probably use badgrub to get flaky bios running, haven't try it though. i'll try in march got more guine pig PC.
mind you i'm testing it using latest quirky.

still prefer remix/porteus anytme though cause the modular approach.

I did a frugal install to an XP box yesterday, grub2xp worked well............just changed the menu.lst to reflect Porteus.

The one thing I notice is on boot, you're given the choice to boot Windows or Porteus..........selecting Windows boots it, selecting Porteus takes you to the grub boot menu..........would be nice to have it all on one screen...........I'll play with it.

roadie

Oh, and something else I just thought of -- this to whomever is responsible for those install scripts; the instruction to "hit any key" is wrong -- the only key that works is Enter at those prompts. This has been wrong forever.

Yes. Just put -n1 after the read.

Hopefully this installer is all sorted by mid march so it can be included in release. A working win7 installer is essential.

i did what you said on the first post but i get this error:

could not find current drive letter.

what can i do for installing the Porteus on USB flash memory ?

i use Universal USB Installer for installing many of linux distros, but Porteus is not included in it, i suggest you to contact the developers and tell them to include it.
(slax is included int it , BTW)

thanks

Thanks Acex, i believe this was on our TODO list a while ago. I'll contact them now.

Posted after 9 hours 7 minutes 45 seconds:
Contacted them, they will add us to the list for the next release due shortly.

For now you can simply unpack the ISO and place the contents on a USB drive. Enter into the boot folder and run the lin_start_here or win_start_here file depending on which OS you use. This will install porteus on your USB. There is also a text file in the root of the ISO with further instructions. (i am speaking about the latest rc release available on the server under testing.

Posted after 3 days 2 hours 38 minutes 26 seconds:
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal- ... -as-1-2-3/

We have now been added.

Does this method work from slax on usb?

root@slax:~# cd /mnt/sda2/32bit_rc11/boot/grubinst
root@slax:/mnt/sda2/32bit_rc11/boot/grubinst# ./grubinst.sh
Hmm.... Not found any disk record of /mnt/sda2/32bit_rc11 in /etc/fstab and /etc/mtab.
MBR not installed. Exiting...
root@slax:/mnt/sda2/32bit_rc11/boot/grubinst#

francois, #

Does this method work from slax on usb?

This grubinst is already out of date.

Currently I am testing new installer for FIDOSlax and porteus, which could work at usb, hdd, added to Windws XP or Windows 7 boot menu, lilo, grub and grub2 menu also

And for frugail installation.

But documentation is not full yet, it on russian, for detail see

http://translate.google.ru/translate?hl ... nstall2USB

http://translate.google.ru/translate?hl ... nstall2HDD

http://translate.google.ru/translate?hl ... HDDWindows

http://translate.google.ru/translate?hl ... llHddLinux

@falcony:
You have a very good looking documentation. I will try your new version. Since I installed xubuntu on my box, I am stocked with grub 2 that I find not as flexible as grub 0.98. Or maybe it is just a question of being familiar with it.

I wonder what others think about usability of grub 0.98 and 2.0?