Howto - Setup several Porteus versions on same disk

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Rava
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Howto - Setup several Porteus versions on same disk

Post#1 by Rava » 03 Feb 2014, 20:11

Could someone please help me setting up that info?

I know basically how it is done:
change the folders from which it was booted to a named folder, when there are completely different versions, like 2.1 x86-64 and 3.0 x86-64.

And when wanting to run several versions that differ, like, in the browser, or Window manager, then it would be done with one of the cheatcodes...

But since I not only want to set up what I need for myself: 2.1 x86-64 and 3.0 x86-64., both XFCe, but as howto for others also the variants how to do it with just changes to the same version, with including or excluding modules...

So, could anyone please help me setting up the other stuff so that I then put it into this main / initial post of the thread: as in: a porteus.cfg with several commented versions to be loaded, like:
2.1 x86-64 KDE
2.1 x86-64 XFCe
2.1 x86-64 Razor
2.1 x86-64 LXDE
2.1 x86-64 XFCe incl. printing, scanning, GIMP, text recognition and open office all loaded by startup. (as one example for a more complete office based variant)


3.0 x86-64 KDE
3.0 1 x86-64 XFCe
3.0 x86-64 Razor
3.0 x86-64 LXDE
3.0 x86-64 XFCe incl. printing, scanning, GIMP text recognition and open office. (again: as one example for a more complete office based variant)
Cheers!
Yours Rava

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Re: Howto - Setup several Porteus versions on same disk

Post#2 by donald » 04 Feb 2014, 00:31

Hi Rava
I'm reading your post again and again...I don't get it..,so this is a wild guess what you mean....
If you want different DE's at startup, put them all in the optional folder and
use the load= (xfce or kde or lxde..) cheatcode. To have this at the startup-splash-screen you could copy the first startup-entry from porteus.cfg, place it as the 2nd entry,rename the Title to whichever DE you want to start and then add the load= cheatcode to the APPEND-Line.Do the same for the other DE's.
It should also work if you make an entry with load= the printing,scanning,GIMP-module.
.....sorry if I'm out of track...

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Re: Howto - Setup several Porteus versions on same disk

Post#3 by Rava » 04 Feb 2014, 00:49

donald,

I want a full howto, starting with the idea someone downloade / created one iso and coppied that to his disk, starting with, say 2.1 x86-64 XFCe standard version.

Cause that would be like most would start of: with one iso that they put on the disk.

Now, the person wants other variants of the same version of 2.1 x86-64.

And the matter is, stuff can be done using several cheatcodes.

We all agree, just putting the whole content of all iso's in different folders would suck, cause you then have the main modules (001-*, 002-*, 003-*, and 010-[GPU driver name) over and over again.

I made it so that I rename all the used graphics diver names (by coincidence, I only have nVidia cards for now, with the exception of one sub notebook with just a IBM GPU) . This sure is not needed, but it is convenient to rename such often used modules like the GPU drivers, cause I think most of us will use one or more of these. (I even suggest the GPU driver should get a fixed initial number naming somewhere at the end, but before 011, so that it fits the approach of Porteus so far...)

So, best is, to have a folder structure like so:
______________________________________________________________________________

\boot\syslinux
rename the vmlinuz and initrd.xz to include the Porteus versions, like so:

2.1_x86-64.initrd.xz
2.1_x86-64.vmlinuz
3.0rc2_x86-64.initrd.xz
3.0rc2_x86-64.vmlinuz

This would be the versions on a x86-64 fixed hard-disk. When on a stick, the user will want to both have the 64 and 32 bit versions...

By putting the version and arch parts at the beginning, in my book it's better for realizing by listing the directory what's in that folder, when you work with different versions and archs of Porteus, the version and arch are a important part, and probably people will have - like I do - more harddisks and USB pendrives with Porteus on them, so it is a needed think to quickly realize which versions are on that very drive, and which are missing.

______________________________________________________________________________

Now on to the porteus folder.

I would suggest to keep that as the main folder.

Like so:
/porteus/2.1_x86-64/base
/porteus/2.1_x86-64/optional [...]
/porteus/3.0rc2_x86-64/base
/porteus/3.0rc2_x86-64/optional [...]

______________________________________________________________________________

And then we need to think about what the best approach is to include or exclude certain modules for setting up a disk with more than one major version of Porteus not compatible with each other (like 2.1 and 3.0 rc1) and how to deal with the variants, like full office, or standard KDE, minimal XFCe, standard XFCe, and such things...

I hope now I made all stuff clear, sorry my brain is a bid muddied by all the workload and stress recently... And I have to explain the stuff in my non native tongue to boot...
Cheers!
Yours Rava

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Re: Howto - Setup several Porteus versions on same disk

Post#4 by tome » 04 Feb 2014, 18:24

It can not be so:
/porteus/2.1_x86-64/base
/porteus/2.1_x86-64/optional [...]
/porteus/3.0rc2_x86-64/base
/porteus/3.0rc2_x86-64/optional [...]
it was for v1.2 but now must be
/porteus/2.1_x86-64/porteus/base
/porteus/2.1_x86-64/porteus/optional [...]
/porteus/3.0rc2_x86-64/porteus/base
/porteus/3.0rc2_x86-64/porteus/optional [...]

initrd.xz and vmlinuz can be moved to /porteus/ver$arch folder
Do you have problem with boot menu that should contain more entries (i.e. for easier testing which DE and version is the best for me or don't want load every boot some unneeded modules?). Can you give some examples in German or share with us partial modified by you file (porteus.cfg) and I will try end or modify another ones if necessary that everything should be good?
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Re: Howto - Setup several Porteus versions on same disk

Post#5 by Rava » 09 Feb 2014, 05:23

tome wrote:initrd.xz and vmlinuz can be moved to /porteus/ver$arch folder
As in: /porteus/2.1_x86-64/porteus/initrd.xz and /porteus/2.1_x86-64/porteus/vmlinuz ? :Search:

That's neat... cause then the version number of vmlinuz and initrd.xz are somewhere in the folder hierarchy they sit in...
tome wrote:Do you have problem with boot menu that should contain more entries (i.e. for easier testing which DE and version is the best for me or don't want load every boot some unneeded modules?). Can you give some examples in German or share with us partial modified by you file (porteus.cfg) and I will try end or modify another ones if necessary that everything should be good?
The issue is: there are several cheat codes that could do the work. You could achive the goal by exclude or include stuff. :roll:

My approach for now: use load=:
You could move the main modules and the main programs you need into base, like (for my current stable 2.1 x86-64)

Code: Select all

000-kernel.xzm
001-core.xzm
002-xorg.xzm
010-nVidia-304.88-porteus-v2.1-x86_64-1fmt-rava.xzm
004-firefox_en-GB_26.0-x86_64_incl_Flash.xzm
011-thunderbird-24.0.1_en-GB_x86-64.xzm
and then put the DE ones into optional, just load the one that is part of the DE wanted by the menu entry, e.g. for XFCe, this would be needed

Code: Select all

003-xfce+viewnior.xzm
(I edited the xfce module, removing it's image viewer and putting in my favourite viewer instead)
and then you can use load= to load the ones from optional you want, here it would be:

Code: Select all

load=xfce
HTH! :)
Cheers!
Yours Rava

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Re: Howto - Setup several Porteus versions on same disk

Post#6 by tome » 09 Feb 2014, 09:38

Example of porteus.cfg:

Code: Select all

LABEL kde64v2.1
MENU LABEL Porteus v2.1 KDE4 x86_64
KERNEL /porteus/2.1_x86-64/porteus/syslinux/vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=/porteus/2.1_x86-64/porteus/syslinux/initrd.xz from=/porteus/2.1_x86-64 changes=/porteus/2.1_x86-64/porteus load=003-k

LABEL lxde64v2.1
MENU LABEL Porteus v2.1 LXDE x86_64
KERNEL /porteus/2.1_x86-64/porteus/syslinux/vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=/porteus/2.1_x86-64/porteus/syslinux/initrd.xz from=/porteus/2.1_x86-64 changes=/porteus/2.1_x86-64/porteus load=003-l 

LABEL mate64v2.1
MENU LABEL Porteus v2.1 MATE x86_64
KERNEL /porteus/2.1_x86-64/porteus/syslinux/vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=/porteus/2.1_x86-64/porteus/syslinux/initrd.xz from=/porteus/2.1_x86-64 changes=/porteus/2.1_x86-64/porteus load=003-m 

LABEL xfce64v2.1
MENU LABEL Porteus v2.1 Xfce x86_64
KERNEL /porteus/2.1_x86-64/porteus/syslinux/vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=/porteus/2.1_x86-64/porteus/syslinux/initrd.xz from=/porteus/2.1_x86-64 changes=/porteus/2.1_x86-64/porteus load=003-x 

LABEL xfce64v2.1+
MENU LABEL Porteus v2.1 Xfce x86_64 complete office based variant
KERNEL /porteus/2.1_x86-64/porteus/syslinux/vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=/porteus/2.1_x86-64/porteus/syslinux/initrd.xz from=/porteus/2.1_x86-64 changes=/porteus/2.1_x86-64/porteus load=003-x;office extramod=/porteus/shared_modules

LABEL razor64v2.1
MENU LABEL Porteus v2.1 Razor x86_64
KERNEL /porteus/2.1_x86-64/porteus/syslinux/vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=/porteus/2.1_x86-64/porteus/syslinux/initrd.xz from=/porteus/2.1_x86-64 changes=/porteus/2.1_x86-64/porteus load=003-r 



LABEL kde64v3.0
MENU LABEL Porteus v3.0 KDE4 x86_64
KERNEL /porteus/3.0_x86-64/porteus/syslinux/vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=/porteus/3.0_x86-64/porteus/syslinux/initrd.xz from=/porteus/3.0_x86-64 changes=/porteus/3.0_x86-64/porteus load=003-k 

LABEL lxde64v3.0
MENU LABEL Porteus v3.0 LXDE x86_64
KERNEL /porteus/3.0_x86-64/porteus/syslinux/vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=/porteus/3.0_x86-64/porteus/syslinux/initrd.xz from=/porteus/3.0_x86-64 changes=/porteus/3.0_x86-64/porteus load=003-l 

LABEL mate64v3.0
MENU LABEL Porteus v3.0 MATE x86_64
KERNEL /porteus/3.0_x86-64/porteus/syslinux/vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=/porteus/3.0_x86-64/porteus/syslinux/initrd.xz from=/porteus/3.0_x86-64 changes=/porteus/3.0_x86-64/porteus load=003-m 

LABEL xfce64v3.0
MENU LABEL Porteus v3.0 Xfce x86_64
KERNEL /porteus/3.0_x86-64/porteus/syslinux/vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=/porteus/3.0_x86-64/porteus/syslinux/initrd.xz from=/porteus/3.0_x86-64 changes=/porteus/3.0_x86-64/porteus load=003-x noload=

LABEL xfce64v3.0+
MENU LABEL Porteus v3.0 Xfce x86_64 complete office based variant
KERNEL /porteus/3.0_x86-64/porteus/syslinux/vmlinuz
APPEND /porteus/3.0_x86-64/porteus/syslinux/initrd=initrd.xz from=/porteus/3.0_x86-64 changes=/porteus/3.0_x86-64/porteus load=003-x;office extramod=/porteus/shared_modules

LABEL razor64v3.0
MENU LABEL Porteus v3.0 Razor x86_64
KERNEL /porteus/3.0_x86-64/porteus/syslinux/vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=/porteus/3.0_x86-64/porteus/syslinux/initrd.xz from=/porteus/3.0_x86-64 changes=/porteus/3.0_x86-64/porteus load=003-r
Create office folder in /porteus/2.1_x86-64/optional and in /porteus/3.0_x86-64/optional and move printing, scanning, GIMP text recognition and open office modules here. Create also /porteus/shared_modules and move there modules that are independent from Porteus releases. Not tested so can be little bugs.
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