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Inadvertent Booting Off External Drives

Posted: 09 Feb 2014, 20:40
by jimwg
Greetings:

This an almost amusing problem. I booted up my flash to my third-hand laptop which has an external HD and it kept on booting up the wrong desktop with missing files. After a few bewildering boot-ups it dawned me that it might be accessing the HD on which I keep full Porteus backup folders. Will 3.0 be able to by default boot-off only the drive it's launched from unless otherwise instructed?

Thanks!

Jim in NYC

Re: Inadvertent Booting Off External Drives

Posted: 09 Feb 2014, 20:59
by Ed_P
A machine's boot sequence is determined by the machine's BIOS which is invoked well before an OS is.

Re: Inadvertent Booting Off External Drives

Posted: 09 Feb 2014, 21:37
by jimwg
Ed_P wrote:A machine's boot sequence is determined by the machine's BIOS which is invoked well before an OS is.
Okay, I wasn't precise enough; the flash's OS did boot but it then grabbed the changes folder from the external hard drive instead of the one on the same flash, and I was availing a virgin Porteus.cfg file.

Jim in NYC

Re: Inadvertent Booting Off External Drives

Posted: 09 Feb 2014, 22:54
by donald
@jimwg
Will 3.0 be able to by default boot-off only the drive it's launched from
http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php? ... 099#p21863
Have a look at "Linuxrc" 8)

Re: Inadvertent Booting Off External Drives

Posted: 09 Feb 2014, 23:44
by jimwg
donald wrote:@jimwg
Will 3.0 be able to by default boot-off only the drive it's launched from
http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php? ... 099#p21863
Have a look at "Linuxrc" 8)
Okay, I'm very pleased to see the rc update. Is it possible for me to bypass the .iso route and just replace the core and other modules with the updated versions in http://ftp3.ie.freebsd.org/pub/dl.porte ... ules-14.0/ ?

Thanks!

Jim in NYC

Re: Inadvertent Booting Off External Drives

Posted: 10 Feb 2014, 14:29
by beny
if you use syslinux or extlinux like boot loader you have to change the name of changes directory if you have two or more porteus system running on,because it run the first device with the changes directory on,take a look to the documentation or cheatcode use for this issue

Re: Inadvertent Booting Off External Drives

Posted: 11 Feb 2014, 00:18
by brokenman
Those modules you link to above are not updated modules. They are from slackware-14.0 the latest rc2 is based on slackware-14.1

I recommend always using changes=UUID for a cheatcode to avoid problems booting incorrect changes.

Re: Inadvertent Booting Off External Drives

Posted: 19 Feb 2014, 13:36
by jimwg
brokenman wrote:Those modules you link to above are not updated modules. They are from slackware-14.0 the latest rc2 is based on slackware-14.1

I recommend always using changes=UUID for a cheatcode to avoid problems booting incorrect changes.
Okay, I can't find this UUID in any of Boot .cfg files. All I want to do is replace whatever UUID is with sdb1 to stay on the right path.

Thanks for any hints!

Jim in NYC

Re: Inadvertent Booting Off External Drives

Posted: 19 Feb 2014, 14:39
by donald
To find out the UUID of your Devices,open a root-terminal
and type blkid

or even
ls -Al /dev/disk/by-uuid

Re: Inadvertent Booting Off External Drives

Posted: 20 Feb 2014, 02:08
by brokenman
Sorry Jim i will explain more clearly.

The UUID is the unique identifier for your partition. It is a portable way to boot porteus because as you know on one machine a usb device may be detected as /dev/sdb1 and on another machine it may be something like /dev/sdd1. Therefore using the UUID cheatcode allows you to be sure you are always pointing to the exact location you intend, on any machine.

As donald said, open a root terminal and enter: blkid
Look for the UUID string on the same line as /dev/sdb1.

Here is the cheatcode from my porteus.cfg file.
from=UUID:d2c78202-d77d-4fea-a793-e3758ed1b438/v3.0

This is /dev/sda7 on my machine and porteus resides inside a folder called v3.0 on the root of this partition.

Re: Inadvertent Booting Off External Drives

Posted: 20 Feb 2014, 15:23
by jimwg
brokenman wrote:Sorry Jim i will explain more clearly.

The UUID is the unique identifier for your partition. It is a portable way to boot porteus because as you know on one machine a usb device may be detected as /dev/sdb1 and on another machine it may be something like /dev/sdd1. Therefore using the UUID cheatcode allows you to be sure you are always pointing to the exact location you intend, on any machine.

As donald said, open a root terminal and enter: blkid
Look for the UUID string on the same line as /dev/sdb1.

Here is the cheatcode from my porteus.cfg file.
from=UUID:d2c78202-d77d-4fea-a793-e3758ed1b438/v3.0

This is /dev/sda7 on my machine and porteus resides inside a folder called v3.0 on the root of this partition.
donald's recommendation worked, thanks!

Can a comments line be put in Porteus.cfg explaining how to get and set up UUID? It was easy enough once explained how!

Aside, is it possible for a boot-up script to first read its drive's UUID and apply it by default? Just wondering!

Jim in NYC

Re: Inadvertent Booting Off External Drives

Posted: 20 Feb 2014, 17:49
by fanthom
Can a comments line be put in Porteus.cfg explaining how to get and set up UUID?
it cant cause we have separate file (cheatcodes.txt) explaining all the cheatcodes and putting them all to porteus.cfg makes no sense.
besides - we also have lilo.conf so it would have to go to two configs.
no go.

is it possible for a boot-up script to first read its drive's UUID and apply it by default?
i dont understand this question, please evaluate.