How to create a porteus 5.0 hybrid usb drive?

[kultex]

I really love porteus 5.0,. but I am struggling, to get a hybrid usb drive, that boots in uefi and legacy mod.

I use different laptops for my job, when I am tour. Until now, it was quite easy, because all was booting from a syslinux stick. But the Win10 Pro of my Toshiba Portege X31 , which I take with me now most of the time, does not like to boot the win10 in legacy mode.

So whats the easiest way to get this hybrid usb drive? Just to tell at the beginning - I have no idea about Grub2 until now. Before I dig into it, maybe somebody more experienced will save me a little bit of time and tell me, what is the easiest way to do?

1) Mx-Linux has a tool, that creates those sticks with the script "live-usb-maker" - this makes this hybrid-sticks formatted with ext4. I can easily boot the system in legacy and uefi mod. Maybe this script can be adopted for Porteus - as Rava suggests with ext2 instead of ext4 (I cannot do this, but maybe this is generally interesting for Poretus)

2) Yumi - as far as I was reading - this is either for uefi or legacy - this are two different programs

3) Ventoy - https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html - this should work as described in the features....

4) rEFInd - https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/REFInd should work also....

5) make it manually: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Multiboot_USB_drive

[kultex]

I decided to stay on the MX / Antix Hybrid Stick - even it is EXT4 and not EXT2 - the EXT2 version is a project for long winter ninghts...

Its pretty easy - install any MX-Linux or Antix Version with https://gitlab.com/bztsrc/usbimager or any other image writing tool - windows or linux to the usb drive. Boot MX or Antix with the option "toram". Use the included "Live usb maker" to make the EXT4 Usb stick. Copy the porteus folder to / of the stick and vmlinuz and intrd.xz to /boot/syslinux - cange the syslinux.cfg with bootentries for Porteus

Code: Select all

LABEL GRAPHICAL
MENU LABEL Graphics mode
KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
APPEND changes=/porteus
TEXT HELP
    Run Porteus the best way we can.
    Try to autoconfigure graphics
    card and use the maximum allowed
    resolution. If booting from a
    non-posix (FAT/NTFS) drive,
    see the Saving Changes Help
    below for how to save changes.
ENDTEXT

LABEL fresh
MENU LABEL Always Fresh
KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
APPEND nomagic base_only norootcopy
TEXT HELP
    Normally Porteus saves all changes
    to the /porteus/changes/ directory
    on the boot media (if writable)
    and restores them next boot.
    Use this option to start a fresh
    system, changes are not read from
    or written to any device
ENDTEXT

and delete everything you dont need....... This is for leagacy booting

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Uefi: Just open /boot/grub/grub.conf and add following lines

Code: Select all

menuentry "Porteus-v5.0-x86_64" {
set gfxpayload=keep
linux /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz changes=porteus
initrd /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
}

menuentry "Always FRESH Porteus-v5.0-x86_64" {
set gfxpayload=keep
linux /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz nomagic base_only norootcopy
initrd /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
}

[Ed_P]

Uefi: Just open /boot/grub/grub.conf and add following lines

UEFI requires a FAT32 partition and Porteus's EFI folder contains the boot code.

My Grub2Win menu for booting Porteus on my UEFI system.

Code: Select all

menuentry " Porteus 5.0 USB - EFI" --class slackware   --class icon-porteus  {

     set bootmgr=/EFI/boot/bootx64.efi         

     set bootdrv=$root
     search -f $bootmgr --set=root
     echo bootmgr: $bootmgr
     sleep -v -i 3
     if [ $root != $bootdrv ]; then
        chainloader $bootmgr
     else
        echo "----------------------------------------"
        echo USB drive NOT found.
        echo
        sleep -v -i 10
     fi
     set root=$bootdrv
     }

Note it boots Porteus' /EFI/boot/bootx64.efi not /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz.