Porteus

I'm still in my first 24 hours of using Porteus. It boots from CD no problem. But I'd like to be able to boot from USB.

So I used the "Porteus Installer" (within Porteus) to put it on USB.

When I then boot that USB, it gets to as far as the screen that asks me how I'd like to boot (e.g. AlwaysFresh, CopyToRam, etc).
As with CD booting, I select "Copy to RAM" (my computer is 1 year old, sufficient RAM).

I then get the message: "Searching for porteus-v3.1-x86_64.sgn" "Device not ready?" "Porteus data not found".

That filename matches the one that I see on the USB in the /porteus/ folder. But it's not finding it.

Any ideas?

Thanks for any input!

try this:
select copy to ram > hit the tab key and add delay=20 > hit enter to boot.

Hi,

I tried adding "delay=20", and it did pause, but then I get the same error message as soon as the loading starts.

Anything else I can try?

Thanks!

ls /porteus/*.sgn ?

Yes, the path is:
/mnt/sda1/porteus/porteus-v3.1-x86_64.sgn

And it's booting from:
/mnt/sda1/boot/

Could I perhaps add the path to a boot file, so it doesn't have to "search"?

rcrsf wrote:And it's booting from:
/mnt/sda1/boot/

Are you sure? What do you boot with that points to that folder?

Could I perhaps add the path to a boot file, so it doesn't have to "search"?

That's the idea but have to determine where to put it. I suspect you're booting from a non /mnt/sda1/boot/ folder.

I'm booting from a USB. It's a SanDisk. Before installing Porteus, I formatted it as Fat32.

When booting from that USB, there is no CD or hard drive in the computer, so I'm sure it's reading from the USB.

**I got that path (/mnt/sda1/boot/) while Porteus was booted from CD (I clicked into the USB and copied/pasted the path to /mnt/sda1/porteus/porteus-v3.1-x86_64.sgn and /mnt/sda1/boot/).

Try adding in the boot/syslinux/porteus.cfg file (under the appropriate menu)

from=/dev/sda1

If this fails then boot from the cd again and follow this.

1) Plug in your USB (lets call it sda1) and mount it
2) Copy files manually from CD (lets call it sr0) to USB

mkdir /mnt/sda1
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1
cp -r /mnt/sr0/* /mnt/sda1
cd /mnt/sda1/boot
sh Porteus-installer-for-Linux* <--- check the name of this script i forget off hand

Now reboot.

I tried both those (brokenman's) suggestion, and it's still not booting. Same error ("Searching for porteus-v3.1-x86_64.sgn" -> "Device not ready?" -> "Porteus data not found")

I know the USB is bootable, as I can run Mint on it (though slowly, since it doesn't load into ram).

One difference I noticed when using brokenman's suggestion of "cp -r /mnt/sr0/* /mnt/sda1" rather than the "Porteus Installer" is that a folder called "EFI" was copied to the USB. I did select "EFI" on build.porteus.com for the creating the Cd iso .. However, I am running my system in "Legacy" boot with "Secure boot" off. I'm not sure if this makes a difference for anything.

Any other ideas? Thanks!

Harkens back to a problem I had on my old m/c. H/d having almost gone had to temporise with the Kanotix system being booted from usb. Kanotix had had no problem with usb i/o, but bios could not boot from usb. Used PLOP to do the boot, but then found that the Kanotix usb driver was wanting in the initrd. (In the end got round all this with kexec.)

It seems the bios can read the San Disk usb, so the question is if the initrd has a driver that can read a San Disk usb. (Not sure if it's then in the boot process that search for sgn file occurs.)

@ rcrsf
--> I am running my system in "Legacy" boot with "Secure boot" off.<--
Format the usb with a msdos Partitioning sheme (not GPT) and then
download and try a standard iso
http://dl.porteus.org/x86_64/current/

I just installed Porteus on a Lexar USB (instead of SanDisk), and it's now booting!

As far as I can remember, I did not do ~anything~ else differently. I even reverted to using the "Porteus Installer". And as with the SanDisk, I formatted the Lexar as fat32.

I was getting a "Device not ready?" message which caused a 5 second timeout, but it them booted. To avoid that, I simply added "delay=2" cheatcode.

If anyone's interested in troubleshooting the SanDisk issue for future users, I still have Porteus on it and would be happy to try.

Thanks everyone for the input. My Porteus now boots up about 10+ times faster on a USB 3.0 than it did on CD!

This seems to be a hardware issue. Unless reformating the key anew solves the problem!

@ rcrsf
Well, not troubleshooting but testing the SanDisk drive:
If you like, you could clone the one that boots (Lexar)
onto the non booting SanDisk using the dd command.
(depends on the size of the 2 drives.)
If the SanDisk won't boot then...scrap..

You have to make an image of the not booting SanDisk drive first,
to restore it, if you want to troubleshoot the original issue again.

donald wrote:If the SanDisk won't boot then...scrap..

Hold on a moment! We have to see if the full-blown Porteus can read the SanDisk, or whether windoze can, before we dismiss it as a hardware issue.