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Can I use Etcher to burn Porteus to my external HD of 320GB, on macOS?

Posted: 29 Jul 2017, 01:04
by gusbemacbe
Hello,

I am a new user of this forum. I want to install Porteus on my external HD of 320GB because I'll take it to my college everyday, so I do not like to use virtual machines on the labs due to the limits.

But I use only macOS Sierra. I use virtual machine of Ubuntu 16.04.

I checked the tutorials and there are no tutorials of installing Porteus for Mac users.

Which is the best option?
1. To use Etcher to burn Porteus' ISO to the external HD which will be formatted as NTFS or FAT.
2. To erase the external HD, partition, reformat it as swap and ext4 to install Porteus.

Gustavo

Can I use Etcher to burn Porteus to my external HD of 320GB, on macOS?

Posted: 29 Jul 2017, 04:23
by jssouza
On a Mac Book Pro this is how I boot from an external FAT32 USB stick:
- Extract the 64 bit porteus ISO onto the USB. There should be 3 folders - boot, EFI and porteus.
- With the USB connected, power on the MAC while press and holding the left "alt" key.
- You should get a boot menu showing "Macintosh HD" "Windows" and "EFI Boot". Select "EFI Boot".
- You should now get th rEFInd boot menu. Select Porteus (usually the right most).

May work for you on an HDD (I assume with NTFS?) as well.

Can I use Etcher to burn Porteus to my external HD of 320GB, on macOS?

Posted: 29 Jul 2017, 10:58
by gusbemacbe
And [BOOT]?

Can I use Etcher to burn Porteus to my external HD of 320GB, on macOS?

Posted: 29 Jul 2017, 11:19
by jssouza
Basically everything after extracting the iso.
Not in front of an efi pc at the moment, so that was from memory.

Can I use Etcher to burn Porteus to my external HD of 320GB, on macOS?

Posted: 29 Jul 2017, 11:26
by gusbemacbe
It worked now, but I do not want to be a guest, I want to be an admin user of Porteus. And I do not know the root password to open Porteus Installer. Does it mean I need an USB driver to burn the ISO to install Porteus on the external HD? If I will do it, will it work on any PC?

Can I use Etcher to burn Porteus to my external HD of 320GB, on macOS?

Posted: 29 Jul 2017, 11:48
by jssouza
Congratulations! :good:

You can login as root using the cheatcode login=root. You will have to add this in the porteus boot menu entry in EFI/BOOT/refind.conf file. Search the forum for similar threads if you need more help on this.

Can I use Etcher to burn Porteus to my external HD of 320GB, on macOS?

Posted: 29 Jul 2017, 11:56
by gusbemacbe
I read the first thread about guest and root passwords, but if I want to change guest name? And if I install programs there, and if I reboot, will the programs be removed?

Can I use Etcher to burn Porteus to my external HD of 320GB, on macOS?

Posted: 29 Jul 2017, 16:16
by jssouza
gusbemacbe wrote:but if I want to change guest name?
Unfortunately, there are internal scripts and configurations that hardcode the default non-root username as guest.
gusbemacbe wrote:And if I install programs there, and if I reboot, will the programs be removed?
Yes, because by default porteus is a live os. However, there is a unique way to install programs, which are called modules. And you can make these modules survive a reboot, and even loaded upon startup for you to be able to use them in that session.
You can use the USM package manager to download programs and create modules out of them.

It might also help to go through this link:
Starting out in Porteus 3.2.2 (A Guide)

Can I use Etcher to burn Porteus to my external HD of 320GB, on macOS?

Posted: 29 Jul 2017, 18:50
by gusbemacbe
Therefore, I saved Porteus Save Session and Porteus Save Changes, did I do everything right? My guest has only 2GB. :-/

Can I use Etcher to burn Porteus to my external HD of 320GB, on macOS?

Posted: 29 Jul 2017, 21:40
by Ed_P
gusbemacbe wrote:
29 Jul 2017, 18:50
did I do everything right?
Very probably except you most likely missed a required step. Once the Save Changes file is created (BTW my initial one was 250MB) you need to reference it in the rEFInd.conf file. This is what I have:

Code: Select all

menuentry "Porteus menu (F2)" {
	volume KERNELS
	icon EFI/BOOT/icons/os_porteus.png
	loader boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
	initrd boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
	options "extramod=/Modules;/modsavedat volume=33 reboot=cold" 
	submenuentry "Save changes" {
		add_options "changes=EXIT:/changes/porteussave.dat "
    }
hth :)

Can I use Etcher to burn Porteus to my external HD of 320GB, on macOS?

Posted: 29 Jul 2017, 23:41
by gusbemacbe
Can I change the path of changes=EXIT:/changes/porteussave.dat to changes=EXIT:/porteus/modules/Gustavo costa.dat?

Because I saved it on the HD/porteus/modules.

I installed successfully Atom, Chrome, Firefox, Gedit, PHPMyAdmin, Pycharm, Sublime Text and themes of Arc. I moved all the aps from tmp/usm/ to my external HD, so I wouldn't lose anything and would have to reinstall everything.

But Porteus failed to install MariaDB and MySQL Bench, it doesn't have Lamp, Xampp and Visual Studio Code. I want install soon FontForge (but the latest and not 2015), Gimp, NetBeans and WebStorm.

As I've installed Arc themes, applications windows didn't get customised and are still ugly. Sublime Text and Gedit look like Windows 95.

I used Porteus Magic Folders to store the guest folder to the .dat for not missing the settings.

Still another thing... I need to backup usm databases, because every time I reboot, the usm databases aren't there and I have to update and reinstall all usm databases.

Can I use Etcher to burn Porteus to my external HD of 320GB, on macOS?

Posted: 30 Jul 2017, 00:04
by ncmprhnsbl
gusbemacbe wrote:
29 Jul 2017, 23:41
Can I change the path of changes=EXIT:/changes/porteussave.dat to changes=EXIT:/porteus/modules/Gustavo costa.dat?
i don't think you can have spaces in your .dat filename (if you must, use : Gustavo_costa.dat)
gusbemacbe wrote:
29 Jul 2017, 23:41
I used Porteus Magic Folders to store the guest folder to the .dat for not missing the settings.
i don't think thats right, for three reasons:
1. all changes(including guest folder) should be be saved to the .dat , so not necessary
2. unless i'm mistaken, Magic Folder should point at a folder not a .dat (a .dat is essentially an .xzm module by another name)
3. afaik you use either changes= or Magics Folders, but not both at that same time
gusbemacbe wrote:
29 Jul 2017, 23:41
Still another thing... I need to backup usm databases, because every time I reboot, the usm databases aren't there and I have to update and reinstall all usm databases.
if your changes= is working correctly, this should be saved too.. (databases are stored in /var/usm/)

Can I use Etcher to burn Porteus to my external HD of 320GB, on macOS?

Posted: 30 Jul 2017, 00:30
by gusbemacbe
ncmprhnsbl wrote:
30 Jul 2017, 00:04
gusbemacbe wrote:
29 Jul 2017, 23:41
Can I change the path of changes=EXIT:/changes/porteussave.dat to changes=EXIT:/porteus/modules/Gustavo costa.dat?
i don't think you can have spaces in your .dat filename (if you must, use : Gustavo_costa.dat)
No, I was on my mobile phne, and it autocorrected forcelly my file name to my names. I mean gustacosta.dat.

I want to know if my code in refind.conf is correct:

Code: Select all

menuentry "Porteus GUI mode" {
	volume KERNELS
	icon EFI/BOOT/icons/os_porteus.png
	loader boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
	initrd boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
	options "extramod=/Modules;/modsavedat volume=33 reboot=cold"
	submenuentry "Save changes" {
		add_options "changes=/porteus"
    }
    submenuentry "Save changes" {
		add_options "changes=EXIT:/changes/porteussave.dat "
    }
	submenuentry "Always fresh" {
		add_options "nomagic base_only norootcopy"
    }
   	submenuentry "Boot to copy2ram mode" {
		add_options "copy2ram"
    }
   	submenuentry "Text mode" {
		add_options "3"
    }
   	submenuentry "pxe-boot" {
		add_options "pxe"
    }
}
And how to fix the ugly W95-like toolbars and windows?

And XAMP?

Can I use Etcher to burn Porteus to my external HD of 320GB, on macOS?

Posted: 30 Jul 2017, 01:01
by gusbemacbe
I installed XAMPP successfully.

Can I use Etcher to burn Porteus to my external HD of 320GB, on macOS?

Posted: 30 Jul 2017, 01:15
by ncmprhnsbl
try this:

Code: Select all

menuentry "Porteus GUI mode" {
	volume KERNELS
	icon EFI/BOOT/icons/os_porteus.png
	loader boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
	initrd boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
	options "changes=EXIT:/changes/porteussave.dat"
	submenuentry "Always fresh" {
		add_options "nomagic base_only norootcopy"
    }
   	submenuentry "Boot to copy2ram mode" {
		add_options "copy2ram"
    }
   	submenuentry "Text mode" {
		add_options "3"
    }
   	submenuentry "pxe-boot" {
		add_options "pxe"
gusbemacbe wrote:
30 Jul 2017, 00:30
And how to fix the ugly W95-like toolbars and windows?
which desktop environment are you using? (eg.xfce mate,cinnamon etc)