Porteus

When we were using Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 to create the USB flashdisks for Porteus Kiosk, and we wanted to update the USB boot disks for our 225 exam computers, when plugging in the Porteus boot USBs on the Windows machine, they always appeared as a Drive letter followed by “BOOT”, allowing them to be written to directly with Win32DiskImager.

In windows 10 however, the drive letters don’t appear at all and the only way you can see and access the USB drive is to either do a low-level format on it, (We use the HDDGuru Hard Disk Low Level Format Tool or use the Windows Disk Management snapin.)

Only once you wipe the drive (and the drive letter appears) can you use Win32DiskImager to burn the .ISO onto the USB.

This is OK for one or two USB flash disks, but when you have 200+ USBs it will take a long time. 15 -port USB hub wiping each flash disk individually, then burning with Win32DiskImager. (Formatting 12-15 seconds + 32-35 seconds per disk for burning - do the math!)

Is it a Windows 10 issue, and does anybody have any suggestions as to why the drive letters are not appearing in Windows 10? Perhaps a “Porteus thing” bootsector or MBR issue with Windows 10?

I would tie it to a Windows 10 security issue, it has executable code. Does the drive show up in Disk Manager? Are there any AV entries from it?

You could also maybe keep an old Windows 7 machine around for working on the flash drives.

hamfast,

It may be faster to boot any linux and perform MBR wiping under this system instead of a Windows.

The procedure is described in the kiosk FAQ:
https://porteus-kiosk.org/faq.html#11

Thanks

Ed_P wrote: ↑

03 Mar 2020, 17:01

I would tie it to a Windows 10 security issue, it has executable code. Does the drive show up in Disk Manager? Are there any AV entries from it?

You could also maybe keep an old Windows 7 machine around for working on the flash drives.

The Disk does show in the Disk Manager, but as "Not Allocated" No AV entries. Windows 10 doesn't recognise the boot sectors of Porteus Kiosk. It worked with Windows 8.1 and 7.0, but now with out university forcing us to stop using Windows 7 and upgrading all our PCs to Windows 10, we are somewhat knackered.

I will have to investigate a dual boot system on our office systems running Linux as well as Windows 10...

hamfast wrote: ↑

04 Mar 2020, 11:13

I will have to investigate a dual boot system on our office systems running Linux as well as Windows 10...

I recommend Grub2Win for duel booting. Free, installs grub2 on Windows 10 and helps creating menus of systems to boot. It also supports booting ISO files directly.

1) Booting Linux live (e.g. Porteus Desktop) is enough.
No need for messing with dual booting.

2) Also - kiosk can be burned from the linux directly on the USB sticks (no need for MBR wiping and using Win32DiskImager under Windows, that would be counter productive):
https://porteus-kiosk.org/download.html#usb

Thanks

Well I managed to get a dual boot system working with Windows 10 and Ubuntu Linux, and it seems to be working OK. It was more of an intellectual challenge for me. (so that I could see if if could be done.)

I copied the custom .iso from the share onto my /home directory on the Ubuntu desktop and ran a Terminal with the command "sudo dd if=Porteus-Kiosk-50.iso of=/dev/sdb1" and got a "No space left on the device" so I presume I should take out the "1" and leave it at "sdb", and change the destination each time to sdc, sdd, sde, sdf, sdg etc for all the USB that I have in the USB hub.

I admit, the Linux way is far easier. All this clicky-pointy stuff in Windows is far to time consuming.

Using Porteus Desktop, but still puzzling/looking for tutorials on how to install Chrome Browser to have it available on the USB boot disk that I can carry around as an emergency. I used the "Browser Selection and Update Tool" and got the xzm file in the /tmp folder and I am instructed to copy it to the modules folder (which I found under /mnt/sdb1/porteus/modules/ . logged in as root and attempted to mv or cp the xzm file from the tmp folder to the modules folder but the filesystem is marked as read-only. I don't see any tutorials specific to this issue.

hamfast,

Please post Porteus Desktop related issues on the main forum rather than kiosk subforum as the problem you described is not caused by the kiosk system.

Thanks

hamfast the xzm file in the /tmp folder can be copied to your /mnt/sdb1/porteus/modules/ folder as guest. If your flash drive's filesystem is marked as read-only that relates to how you created and/or formatted the flash drive.

Added in 14 hours 42 minutes 46 seconds:
hamfast is the system on the flash drive a regular Porteus system or a Porteus Kiosk system?