Wow!! I'm impressed. Here's what I don't get, I can boot the ISO to the point where it executes your initrd within the ISO. If initrd is executing from within the ISO why can't it, or the system, continue to read and execute other files within the ISO? Maybe the problem isn't initrd's ability to read the ntfs partition on which the ISO exist but rather my inability to understand how the livemedia parameter works.alienbob wrote:I create the initrd for Slackware Live myself,
For example, within grub2 to access the initrd file I'm specifying /boot/initrd.img preceded by (loop). Not /dev/sda5/ or /mnt/sda5/. The ntfs path is being handled by grub2 and it's loopback function. The same thing with /boot/generic. (loop)/boot/generic. So why with the livemedia parameter isn't it acceptable to specify (loop)/liveslak? Why doesn't livemedia=(loop):/liveslax or livemedia=(loop)/liveslax:/liveslax or livemedia=(loop):(loop)/liveslax work?
I hope I'm not boring you but you are the first person I have met who has created an initrd and I don't understand how the livemedia parameter works.
The ISO only needs to be read. The partition on which it resides only needs to be read. I will debug the issue any way you want, just ask. As for providing you with patches I'm afraid I can't. This is way over my head. I struggle writing basic bash scripts.If you want to use this feature of booting off the ISO on a filesystem, you can debug the issue and provide me with patches. What's most likely the case (based on later posts in this thread) is that the NTFS filesystem you are using is not supported in the initrd. I only added support for ext2/3/4, and for (v)fat. Trivial to fix that, if you consider that the NTFS partition only needs to be read,
Well being just after the holidays a USB stick may be an option but the rest of the year not so much. And many of us that use ISB sticks have them configured to multi-boot with other systems already on them. And even my USB sticks boot ISOs. As for VMWare and VirtualBox and QEMU they work, if you have the RAM and processor power to use them. On my 1GHz 2GB machine it's a struggle at best.Then let them write the ISO to a USB stick. Or install VMWare Player, works even better.IMO The ability to boot ISOs is a very effective way to get Windows users to try Linux.
I'm not looking for a Porteus competitor. I'm just curious how connected Porteus is to the native Slackware. And since I am using the Cinnamon version of Porteus it should be an interesting comparison. I am looking for as comparing of a son to a father.Again, I did not have the same design in mind as Porteus, it would be a waste of time to create a second Porteus. It's evolved into something sufficiently different from Porteus that we should have a different userbase anyway.
Wow!! Thank you alienbob. But that is so far over my head. I can follow it right up to the first ----- line.alienbob wrote:..and if you are adventurous, you can checkout liveslak from git, and generate an ISO yourself that should have NTFS support, with this commit: http://bear.alienbase.nl/cgit/liveslak/ ... 74ad3f7ec4
Thanks for getting back to me.