PorteuX as the sole operating system on the SSD hard drive

[Kulle]

I have tried a USB stick with PorteuX 1.8 Xfce stable on the HP EliteBook 850 G6.
Everything worked immediately.

However, the system is still minimalistic, only the modules in the base folder and a browser (Firefox).

I now want to first install this minimalistic system on the SSD hard drive (476.94 GiB) as the sole operating system
and later gradually supplement it with additional modules.

The SSD hard drive was completely wiped by the previous owner.

The problem:
I have been using Porteus for years and have since gained considerable Linux knowledge.
But I have never used gparted before and also not grub.

Ed_P writes
(booting porteus from hard drive)
"UEFI systems require the boot drive to be FAT32. For Porteus that means the /EFI and /boot folders must be on a FAT32 drive"
Why ??
Does this also apply to PorteuX?

I actually need a step-by-step guide for my plan.
This would potentially be interesting for other users in similar cases.

Thank you very much for the help

[porteux]

@Kulle, the documentation answers all your questions in a pretty straightforward way. Have you read it?

If your system doesn't support legacy boot, you'll need to use EFI boot, therefore you'll need at least one FAT32 partition. In this case you can have a FAT32 partition with just /EFI and /boot folders, and /porteux in a second partition of any kind (a POSIX-compatible one will provide automatic save-changes, while FAT/NTFS will required other ways to persist your data after rebooting).

In my case I have a NVMe with a FAT32 partition with /EFI and /boot, and a second partition of type NTFS with /porteux. The reason I have NTFS is because it's more compatible with other systems and it supports symlinks. I don't use automatic save changes, but a custom shutdown script combined with rootcopy because I find this cleaner and faster.

[Ed_P]

Ed_P writes
(booting porteus from hard drive)
"UEFI systems require the boot drive to be FAT32. For Porteus that means the /EFI and /boot folders must be on a FAT32 drive"
Why ??

Because that's the way UEFI systems are designed, and it applies to all operating systems run on UEFI hardware.

a custom shutdown script

It got a name?

combined with rootcopy

A user can't save changes without using rootcopy!

Added in 4 hours 3 minutes 27 seconds:
Doing a Search for "changes" in the menu brings up the option to Change Language.

[Kulle]

Thank you porteux,

the documentation is brief and understandable.

I will perform the installation after the holidays and I hope it will work.

But some questions will certainly still come up.

[Ed_P]

a custom shutdown script

Ok, /opt/porteux-scripts/ has two scripts: save-changes and save-session.py Which one were you referring to running at shutdown?

[Kulle]

Hi porteux,

I strictly followed the instructions, but it did not work.

Code: Select all

guest@porteux:~$ ls /mnt/nvme0n1p1/
EFI/  boot/

guest@porteux:~$ ls /mnt/nvme0n1p2/porteux/base/
000-kernel-6.12.5.xzm*              001-core-stable-20241215.xzm*
002-gui-stable-20241215.xzm*        002-xtra-stable-20241215.xzm*
003-xfce-4.18-stable-20241215.xzm*

porteux-installer-for-linux.run produces an error message

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guest@porteux:/mnt/nvme0n1p1/boot$ ./porteux-installer-for-linux.run 
Creating directory /tmp/porteux-installer
Verifying archive integrity...  100%   MD5 checksums are OK. All good.
Uncompressing PorteuX Installer  100%  

Admin's password is required.
Passwort: 
Only 'dos' or 'msdos' partition table is supported.
Format your storage media using partition table 'dos' or 'msdos' and try again.

Here is all the information about the SSD drive

Code: Select all

guest@porteux:~$ sudo parted /dev/nvme0n1 print
Passwort: 
Modell: KXG60ZNV512G KIOXIA (nvme)
Festplatte  /dev/nvme0n1:  512GB
Sektorgröße (logisch/physisch): 512B/512B
Partitionstabelle: gpt
Disk-Flags: 

Nummer  Anfang  Ende   Größe  Dateisystem  Name        Flags
 1      1049kB  578MB  577MB  fat32        boot        msftdata
 2      578MB   512GB  512GB  ntfs         Festplatte  msftdata

guest@porteux:~$ sudo blkid /dev/nvme0n1p1
/dev/nvme0n1p1: LABEL_FATBOOT="BOOT" LABEL="BOOT" UUID="40BB-A358" BLOCK_SIZE="512" TYPE="vfat" PARTLABEL="boot" PARTUUID="0ed86356-27a8-4c40-a81a-00e0fe3cb831"

guest@porteux:~$ sudo blkid /dev/nvme0n1p2
/dev/nvme0n1p2: LABEL="Festplatte" BLOCK_SIZE="512" UUID="14AD2CA0697B3ECC" TYPE="ntfs" PARTLABEL="Festplatte" PARTUUID="2567adce-32e0-4e11-a328-83c0a48368d4"

guest@porteux:~$ mount | grep nvme0n1
/dev/nvme0n1p1 on /mnt/nvme0n1p1 type vfat (rw,noatime,nodiratime,uid=1000,fmask=0000,dmask=0000,allow_utime=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,check=s,utf8,errors=remount-ro)
/dev/nvme0n1p2 on /mnt/nvme0n1p2 type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,allow_other,blksize=4096)

What did I do wrong during partitioning and/or formatting?
I used gparted for the first time,
And I chose the partition type GPT, because it's strongly recommended for modern SSD drives.
Was that perhaps the mistake? Is GPT not supported by PorteuX?

[Kulle]

I had read:
GPT offers significantly more flexibility, reliability, and scalability compared to the traditional MBR partition table:
Disk Size: Supports up to 9.4 ZB (vs. MBR's 2TB limit)
Partitions: Up to 128 primary partitions (vs. MBR's 4)
Reliability: Backup partition table, CRC32 error checking
64-bit LBA addressing
Unique partition GUIDs
Full UEFI compatibility
Better data integrity (Improved sector addressing)
Designed for modern hardware/software ecosystems

Only when you run porteux-installer-for-linux.run (i.e. when it is too late) do you find out that gpt is not supported

So I'll start from the beginning and choose MBR
I hope it works then,
because even with a brand new USB stick with MBR there were problems, see here:
PorteuX 1.7 has been released (Post by Kulle #100859)

[Ed_P]

Kulle, you might find my instructions here: Trouble installing (Post by Ed_P #87716) helpful.

[porteux]

@Kulle, unmount all partitions of the device you want to install PorteuX to, then open GParted and select the device you want to install PorteuX (please note you'll lose ALL data stored in this device):

1. go to 'Device' menu
2. click on 'Create Partition Table...'
3. the option 'msdos' should be already selected, but if it's not, please select it in the drop down menu
4. click on 'Apply'
5. right click on unallocated partition and select 'New'
6. select 'fat32' in the 'File system' drop down
7. set the size for this partition -- 150 MB would be enough
8. click on 'Add'
9. click on the unallocated partition (below the fat32) and select 'New'
10. select the file system type for this second partition -- if you don't know, choose ext4
11. click on 'Add'
12. click on the green 'v' button ('Apply All Operations') on the toolbar
13. click on 'Apply'

Now proceed with the official instructions to install PorteuX.

[Kulle]

Hello porteux,
many thanks for your help.
I had only disabled SecureBoot in the UEFI to be able to boot from the USB stick at all.
I hadn't made any other changes, particularly no changes to the boot order.

I was just about to start recreating the partition table with type msdos.
But I didn't even get to that point.

After powering on, the notebook immediately booted the system located on nvme0n1p2 in the porteux folder.

I was very surprised.
So everything can remain as I had set it up:

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Modell: KXG60ZNV512G KIOXIA (nvme)
Festplatte  /dev/nvme0n1:  512GB
Sektorgröße (logisch/physisch): 512B/512B
Partitionstabelle: gpt
Disk-Flags: 

Nummer  Anfang  Ende   Größe  Dateisystem  Name        Flags
 1      1049kB  578MB  577MB  fat32        boot        msftdata
 2      578MB   512GB  512GB  ntfs         Festplatte  msftdata

However, I chose the boot partition unnecessarily large.

[rych]

Only 'dos' or 'msdos' partition table is supported.
Format your storage media using partition table 'dos' or 'msdos' and try again.

And I chose the partition type GPT

porteux, I also find nowadays that Porteus/X boots fine with either GPT or msdos. At least on UEFI systems.

[Ed_P]

So everything can remain as I had set it up:

Code: Select all

Nummer  Anfang  Ende   Größe  Dateisystem  Name        Flags
 1      1049kB  578MB  577MB  fat32        boot        msftdata
 2      578MB   512GB  512GB  ntfs         Festplatte  msftdata

However, I chose the boot partition unnecessarily large.

512MB is normal for most systems, supports adding more systems to the disk and supports installing a whole Porteus/x system onto a new disk then using it's GParted app to partition the disk with one or more new data partitions.

porteux, I also find nowadays that Porteus/X boots fine with either GPT or msdos. At least on UEFI systems.

GPT has been supporting Porteus systems for a long time. Uefi and porteus 3.0 Just remember to disable Secure Boot.

Added in 4 minutes 10 seconds:

Only when you run porteux-installer-for-linux.run (i.e. when it is too late) do you find out that gpt is not supported

Hopefully this gets fixed.

[porteux]

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Gonna add support to gpt in PorteuX 1.9

[SEMERENDO.cr]

Porteux🫵 is a degeneration of Porteus, that installer is useless, unless you create the first partition in FAT32 format
egrep: warning: egrep is obsolescent; using grep -E

[Ed_P]

I believe on UEFI hardware FAT32 is required. I could be wrong.