are used to pass special options to the booting operating system. They could be used for example, to deal with hardware difficult to be managed. But they are also rapid fixes at bootup for some important changes of behavior of the operating system.
The cheatcodes could be incoporated into the menu.lst (instructions to the booloader, for Porteus namely GRUB) or type in at boot screen while there is a delay presented to choose from between different options (for example choosing between different OS on multiple partitions).
In GRUB 0.9, letter "e" is used to modify the appearing menu.lst items at booting.
1) copy2ram
For example, the copy2ram cheatcode will will speed up Porteus by loading the OS into RAM. RAM is the acronym for random access memory. RAM is known to be a lot more rapid than memory provided by HDD (hard disk drive). However, if you get more speed when running the OS into RAM, this is at the cost of a longer booting time needed to load the files at startup. Porteus needs at least 320MB of RAM to boot properly.
2) nocd and nosound
A second example is brought by Captain Picard, citation from faq manual:
http://porteus.org/faq.html#15
"A cheat code refers to a command that can be entered at the start of booting (or entered into porteus.cfg for permanence) which passes a value to porteus such as ... 'nocd' to boot with no CD or 'nosound' to boo with no sound. These can be very useful for trouble shooting problem components."
3) toroot
In Porteus v. 1.0, the toroot cheatcode permits booting directly into root mode without the use of the password, see:
/porteus folder cheatcodes.txt
In porteus 0.09 the cheatcodes are to be found on the live CD in the /porteus/cheatcodes.txt file. In the to be released versions 1.0 of porteus 32 bit and 34 but they will found in the /boot/docs/cheatcodes.txt file. The following cheatcodes are included in version 0.09 of porteus:
Code: Select all
Cheatcodes for Porteus.
=======================================
Boot parameters (also known as cheatcodes) are used to affect the
booting process of Porteus. Some of them are common for all Linuxes, others
are specific for Porteus only. You can use them to disable desired kind of
hardware detection, to start Porteus from harddisk, to skip the login
prompt and start GUI, etc.
Reboot your computer and wait several seconds until nice graphical porteus
logo appears with a boot menu (it's there usually for less then 9 seconds).
Choose your desired menu entry and hit Tab, which will allow you to edit the
command line. Add your desired boot argument from the list below, to affect
booting the way you like:
acpi=off
nohotplug
... Disable specified hardware autodetection in the case of hangups
Your hardware won't be detected at all, you'll have to use "pcimodules"
command after logging into Porteus and you'll have to try to modprobe
all needed modules from the list manually.
autoexec=...
autoexec=startx
autoexec=xconf;startx
autoexec=xconf;startx;reboot
... Execute specified command(s) instead of Porteus login. In this
example, skip porteus login prompt and automatically start XWindow
system. Use semicolon (;) as command separator.
... Porteus will not reboot automatically after the command(s) finish,
so if you'd like to restart, specify 'reboot' or 'poweroff' as the
last command.
... If you need to use spaces in the commandline, replace them by ~.
For example, autoexec=echo~Shutting~power;poweroff will do just like that.
autoexec=lxde
... This parameter will let you use lxde as default desktop over KDE one.
changes=/dev/device
changes=/dev/device/file.dat
changes=/path/
changes=/path/file.dat
changes=/dev/device/path/
... All changes you made in Porteus are kept in memory until you reboot.
But with this boot parameter, you tell Porteus to use different device
(or a file or directory) than the memory for storing changes. You can,
for example, format your disk partition /dev/hda1 with some Linux
filesystem (eg. xfs) and then use changes=/dev/hda1 to store all changes
to that disk (it will be stored in 'changes' directory on that disk.
This way you won't loose your changes after reboot.
... If you use a file name instead of device, and the file contains valid
filesystem, Porteus will mount it as a loop device and will store changes
to it. Moreover if you don't specify the device where the file is stored,
Porteus will try to find it on all your partitions.
... If you use a directory, Porteus will save changes to it (it will make a
'changes' subdirectory inthere). You don't even need a Linux filesystem
on that disk, as the directory will be overlayed by posixovl. This way,
you can save your changes even to VFAT or NTFS.
copy2ram
... Copy all files (all required and optional modules) to RAM.
You'll need at least 320MB of RAM to do this and boot Porteus properly.
This will slow down the boot phase but it will speed up Porteus!
debug
... Enable debug mode (and start ash shell several times during the boot)
hit Ctrl+D to continue booting.
delay=some_value
... To be used for devices which needs extra time to settle up. Default value
is 9 seconds so in case of failure you will have to use more than that.
Example: scantimeout=15 will cause 15 second delay to perform second scan.
from_dev=/dev/sda1
... To load Porteus from different place instead of the boot device.
This cheatcode also speeds up boot time as init script is searching
for porteus data at specified device first.
from_dir=/path/to/folder
... This cheatcode provides path to directory where Porteus ISO image is unpacked.
Can be used together with 'from_dev=' parameter to avoid searching through
all available devices.
Example: 'from_dev=/dev/sda6' 'from_dir=/linux/porteus-v08' will cause
searching for *.sgn file in /mnt/sda6/linux/porteus-v09/porteus folder first.
from_iso=/path/to/image.iso
... This cheatcode can be used to boot from Porteus ISO image directly.
Full path to ISO is required.
WARNING: You can't use it together with 'from_dev=' parameter.
Example: 'from_iso=/mnt/sda6/linux-images/latest-remix.iso'
fsck
... Enables filesystem check for ext(2,3,4), reiserfs and jfs partitions
during boot time before anything is mounted by Porteus.
iocharset=some_iocharset
... Same as above but applies to fat and iso9660 (CD,DVD) filesystems. List of
available iocharets can be found in /lib/modules/2.6*/kernel/fs/nls folder.
... You need to provide this parameter without 'nls_' prefix and '.ko' suffix.
Example: iocharset=iso8859-2 will cause mounting of fat/iso9660 filesystems
with polish charset.
lang=some_locale
... Specifies 'locale' option for ntfs filesystem and sets localization for
whole system when Language-Selection-Tool is not used.
Example: lang=pl or lang=pl_PL will cause mounting of ntfs partition
with polish charset.
Please remember:
If porteus will be booted from nfts partition then nls support is reduced
to utf8 encoding only. Remix doesn't provide localized versions of initrd
so please stick with utf8, remaster initrd or use other filesystem for
booting media if possible.
load=module
... Load optional modules from /optional/ directory on the booting media.
You can use full module name (module.lzm) or you can skip the extension.
max_loop=some_value
... This parameter tells the kernel how many loop devices needs to be created
in advance during boot time.
Example: max_loop=150 will give you 150 loop devices from start but this
number is hardcoded into kernel and you wont be able to create more.noauto
... List harddisks in fstab with 'noauto', so you have to mount every
disk manually in order to access it.
nocd
... Don't even know about any cdroms at all.
noeject
... Do not eject CD/DVD disc during boot time and shutdown.
Remember: when 'copy2ram' cheatcode is used then CD is unmounted by
linuxrc and stays invisible for automounting daemons. To get access
to files on it, you need to mount CD manually or simply take it out
and insert back.
nodma
... Disable DMA for all CD-ROMs and disks.
nohd
... Don't even know about any harddisks at all.
noload=module
noload=module[1];module[n]
... Disable loading of any modules specified. This affects all the modules on
Porteus CD, including /base and /modules, so using noload=kde will disable
loading of all modules with 'kde' in the name. It is useful with copy2ram
cheatcode, because any un-used module is not copied to ram.
noswap
... Prevents of using swap partition by Porteus.
passwd=somepass
passwd=ask
... Set root's password to "somepass", or ask (with =ask) for a new password
during the boot, before starting porteus (don't worry, the new password
won't be shown at the login screen)
ramsize=some_value%
... Will let you set the custom size of root (/) aufs partition. Default value
is 60% of available RAM memory. Useful for PC's with small memory amount.
Example: ramsize=25%
sgnfile=some_name.sgn
... This cheatcode specifies *.sgn file which Porteus will search for.
Useful when you need to store several linux-live distros on one disk/disc.
Example: sgnfile=remix-usb.sgn
vmalloc=some_valueMB
... When plenty of modules are loaded (30 or more) some kernel drivers may not
be initialized correctly. Use this cheatcode to increase kernel memory
allocation and fix this issue.
Example: vmalloc=256MB - if not enough try with 512MB option.
They are out now and can be found in Cheatcodes - what they are and how to use them in the info section of the Porteus site:
http://porteus.org/component/content/ar ... -them.html
Edited as of 2011-07-02 from Montreal.