Save settings not working when booting ISO [Solved]

[NathTheDog]

Forgive me if this has been asked before but I've been through several threads about save files and none of them seem to fit my issue.

My Porteus installation is unusual, perhaps. This is due to the specific use case I need it for.

I have the Porteus ISO file in an ext4 partition which is the home directory for my main OS, Ubuntu 22.04.
I have customised my grub so that it provides an option to boot directly from the iso file.

This complained about not having a /porteus folder. So I've added that to a usb drive that I ensure is inserted when attempting to boot porteus. This made it happy enough to boot.
I need to use the copy2ram cheat with porteus because I need the ability to completely overwrite the entire internal drive - I'm hoping porteus running in RAM will ensure that it doesn't take itself out until the process is finished.

I added the copy2ram cheat to /mnt/sdb1/porteus/porteus-v5.0-x86_64.cfg and it works, it does find that cheat code so it is using this file properly, I've confirmed this with other cheats such as delay. It is my understanding that it's within this file that I should add the "changes" cheat and point it at the savefile which I have created on my USB stick changes=/mnt/sdb1/porteus/changes/changes.dat.

This does not work. On boot I see a message about not finding the changes cheat code. Weird because it finds the other cheat codes in the same file. What am I missing here?

Thanks in advance.

[Ed_P]

Hi NathTheDog, I boot ISOs also.

I added the copy2ram cheat to /mnt/sdb1/porteus/porteus-v5.0-x86_64.cfg and it works,

I boot the ISOs with grub2 and put all my boot parms in the grub menus. Here's an example:

Code: Select all

set timeout=30
     set linux_folder=/porteus5.0
#     set iso="/ISOs/Porteus-CINNAMON-v5.0-x86_64-230616-6.3.7.iso"
     set iso="/ISOs/Porteus-CINNAMON-v5.0-x86_64-230616-6.3.13.iso"
     
menuentry " Porteus 5.0 ISO - changes="  --class slackware   --class icon-porteus  {

     set bootparms="volume=10 reboot=cold extramod=$linux_folder/Modules \
       changes=EXIT:$linux_folder/changes/50save.dat \
       noload=kde;jinn;lxqt;xfce;lxde;mate;open;dat.xzm;mychanges;autonet" 

     search -f $iso --set=root
     loopback loop $iso
     linux (loop)/boot/syslinux/vmlinuz      from=$iso $bootparms
     initrd (loop)/boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
     }  

My ISOs and my changes are on a NTFS partition.

On boot I see a message about not finding the changes cheat code.

Is the msg about not finding the code or not finding the file? Maybe all you need is changes=/porteus/changes/changes.dat. And since the file is on a USB drive maybe changes=EXIT:/mnt/sdb1/porteus/changes/changes.dat might be a better option.

Another thought is would the save.dat file work on your ISO's partition.

[NathTheDog]

Thank you Ed, I'll give those things a try and update this thread if I have any luck.

Cheers,
Nath.

[NathTheDog]

Update

Hi Ed,

Your suggestion of adding changes to the boot params under the menu entry in the grub config file did the trick! Thank you very much, you've been a great help.

Best,
Nath.