Re: Installed Porteus on a FAT formated HD - SOLVED

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Re: Installed Porteus on a FAT formated HD - SOLVED

Post#1 by Brock » 11 Sep 2014, 06:03

I installed Porteus on an old 500MB hard drive that previously had some old version of Windows installed. I deleted all the files on the HD and installed Porteus, with no problems, except that it always boots up as 'guest' instead of 'root'.

I booted the standard version, using the change "login=root", expecting the change to stick, but before the boot process finished, I got the following message, which I don't know how to deal with:

"A Windows filesystem (FAT, NTFS) or other non-posix compatible filesystem has been detected on /porteus. Your changes cannot be saved directly to the specified storage media with this setup. Please use the "Porteus Save File Manager" to create a .dat file container and use it for saving your changes after your next reboot. Please "Enter" to continue "Always Fresh" mode for this session."

Should I have re-formatted my HD before I installed Porteus? If so, how? Or, can Porteus run OK on top of the FAT/NTFS format? My primary goal at the moment is just to be able to boot as 'root' without having to interrupt the boot process every time to manually type in "login=root".
Last edited by Brock on 18 Sep 2014, 17:05, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Installed Porteus on a FAT formated HD - Problem

Post#2 by francois » 11 Sep 2014, 06:25

Welcome to porteus brock.

1.0 It is better to run on a linux file system. This way you do not need save.dat containers to save your changes. With a porteus cd or usb, you can use in the system category of the panel menu a partition manager (gparted for the xfce desktop environment).

2.0 You can if you want keep the ntfs filesystem. Then go to the porteus settings, there is a diskette icon that will permit the creation of a save.dat container. Once created, reboot. Your changes should be kept.
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Re: Installed Porteus on a FAT formated HD - Problem

Post#3 by fanthom » 11 Sep 2014, 09:37

hi Brock,

to make your "login=root" cheat persistent please read this doc:
http://www.porteus.org/component/conten ... -them.html

in order to save changes on FAT/NTFS:
http://www.porteus.org/component/conten ... d-one.html
Please add [Solved] to your thread title if the solution was found.

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Re: Installed Porteus on a FAT formated HD - Problem

Post#4 by Brock » 13 Sep 2014, 07:11

Things seem to have gone from bad to worse. From one of the recent replies I received, it seemed that I couldn't save my changes (conveniently) because my HD was formated as FAT, so I decided to avoid the "work-arounds", and just reformat the HD in a Linux format. After a little research, I determined that would be Ext4, which seemed to be the preferred system. Then I reinstalled Porteus. Now it won't boot at all off of the HD. I get the message: "Missing Operating System - Boot Disk Failure". Yes, when I installed Porteus, I did click the check box to make the installation bootable. I even installed Porteus twice, just in cast I had forgotten to do that the first time. Same result.

Just as a comment from a "Newbie", I have been investigating Linux systems for the last 4-5 weeks, and Porteus in particular, for the last two weeks, and I have to say that I never had any of these kind of problems with Windows. You just installed it, and it ran. I want to love Linux, and I want to shake off Microsoft, but really....Linux might be fun for geeks (no insult intended), but it is no fun for people who want to do more than just fiddle with their computers, to get them to work. I like Porteus, it has great potential, but why, oh why, can't it work right out of the box?

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Re: Installed Porteus on a FAT formated HD - Problem

Post#5 by fanthom » 13 Sep 2014, 19:28

looks like MBR was never updated on the hard drive.
please boot porteus from CD/usb -> navigate to your hd (/mnt/sdXY)/boot folder -> run: 'sh Porteus-installer-for-Linux.com' and it should work.
if not then please paste here a content of generated debug.txt file.

thanks
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Re: Installed Porteus on a FAT formated HD - Problem

Post#6 by Ed_P » 13 Sep 2014, 19:58

Brock wrote:so I decided to avoid the "work-arounds",
And to disregard the solution posted
Please use the "Porteus Save File Manager" to create a .dat file container and use it for saving your changes after your next reboot.
You need to start slow and grow. Baby steps rather than leaps are a better way to learn something new.
Just as a comment from a "Newbie", I have been investigating Linux systems for the last 4-5 weeks, and Porteus in particular, for the last two weeks, and I have to say that I never had any of these kind of problems with Windows.
So many comments come to mind. :D

You get what you pay for.
Why didn't you install Windows on the machine? Why Linux?
You learn more from mistakes than plug and play.
etc
etc

But we were all newbies at some point, and some of us still are.

Not sure how you did your install after formating, or understand why the install didn't do the formating, but fanthom's advice should solve your problem.

BTW I'm running my Porteus off a NTFS formated drive. And I have a save.dat file.
I like Porteus, it has great potential, but why, oh why, can't it work right out of the box?
For people who don't manually format their machine's hard drives it does work right out of the box, just like it did for you. For people who want bells and whistles, like changes saved, it takes an extra step or two. (But they are baby steps. Really!)

Have fun, and enjoy the trip. :wink:
Ed

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Re: Installed Porteus on a FAT formated HD - Problem

Post#7 by Brock » 14 Sep 2014, 06:45

All, Thank you for your patience with me. Your points are well taken.

I tried to run "Porteus-Installer-for-Linux.com", as suggested, and got "An error occurred while loading the Archive". Now what?

To answer some of the other questions: I left Windows because they ceased supporting (or plan to cease supporting) two good operating systems that we all depended upon, and stuck us with Windows 8, all for profit (or maybe perversity). Over the years, I have also come to resent their heavy-handed marketing approach, and high cost of OS's and of programs. Then there is the constant fight against viruses. So, it just seemed to be the right time to migrate to Linux. I already have Mint 17 loaded on one computer, but my backup computer only has a 450MB HD, which is why I wanted to install Porteus on it. I am committed to seeing this through, as long as you good people do not lose patience with me. I don't really want or expect a lot of hand-holding, but what I need to do first is to be able to boot from my hard drive, as root, and to have that, and my other preferences, be saved (like network adapter settings) when I shutdown. From that point on, I think I can more or less take it from there.

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Re: Installed Porteus on a FAT formated HD - Problem

Post#8 by fanthom » 14 Sep 2014, 08:15

"An error occurred while loading the Archive". Now what?
i guess that installer is corrupted. please unpack whole porteus ISO on the HD manually (delete old files) and run the installer once again.
should be ok this time.
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Re: Installed Porteus on a FAT formated HD - Problem

Post#9 by tome » 14 Sep 2014, 14:06

Porteus installer must extract some files but iso image, cd disk are not writable - that is the problem, am I wrong?
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Re: Installed Porteus on a FAT formated HD - Problem

Post#10 by Ed_P » 14 Sep 2014, 23:00

fanthom wrote:i guess that installer is corrupted. please unpack whole porteus ISO on the HD manually (delete old files) and run the installer once again.
How do you suggest he unpack the ISO? spaceFM shows only installer.bat and two syslinux files in it. In Windows I can see much
more with Virtual Clone Drive.
tome wrote:Porteus installer must extract some files but iso image, cd disk are not writable - that is the problem, am I wrong?
Not writable but readable. But if the ISO download is corrupted then not even that.
Ed

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Re: Installed Porteus on a FAT formated HD - Problem

Post#11 by Brock » 15 Sep 2014, 19:28

Thanks guys. I really do appreciate your efforts to help me. This is just too complicated, so I'm moving on. Feel free to close or delete this topic.

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Re: Installed Porteus on a FAT formated HD - Problem

Post#12 by francois » 16 Sep 2014, 00:56

Brock, please don't be discouraged, really it is not complicated. And there are more than one way of doing it. Once you are set with porteus or linux, I doubt that you will ever return to windows. There is a lot of service on this forum. :)
Prendre son temps, profiter de celui qui passe.

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Re: Installed Porteus on a FAT formated HD - Problem

Post#13 by Brock » 16 Sep 2014, 16:51

Thank you Francois. As I said before, I do like Porteus, but not being able to install it on my hard drive, so that all my settings get saved is a deal-killer. Unfortunately, I don't understand the language that Linux people speak, and I don't expect you guys to do it for me, so the best thing is for me to find a simpler distro that I can deal with. Again, I appreciate how helpful you have tried to be.

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Re: Installed Porteus on a FAT formated HD - SOLVED

Post#14 by Brock » 17 Sep 2014, 18:37

I had not really intended to come back to Porteus and give it another try, but I did (long story). For other newbies who might read this, briefly, my problem was getting Porteus installed on my Hard Drive, and then getting all my changes and settings to stick.

It's all fixed now. What I did was to boot Porteus from a CD, using the cheat code "login=root". Then I used 'Gparted' to re-partition and reformat my hard drive to 'ext4' filesystem. **Warning: This will delete all files on the hard drive**. Then I simply ran System Tools>Porteus Installer. Installation went fine, then I set up my wireless network, reset the clock, and set a bookmark in Firefox just as a test to see if the changes would stick when I rebooted. They did...all except for my root status. It logged me in a 'guest'. To fix that I used the File Manager to navigate to /mnt/sda1/boot/syslinux, where I found the file 'porteus.cfg'. I opened that file and found a section called 'LABEL lxde' (line 39 for me - maybe it will be different for you). A couple of lines under that was a blue line which started with 'APPEND initrd...' (line 42). At the end of that line I inserted the cheat code: login=root, and saved the file. When I rebooted, I was logged in as root, and all my changes held. SUCCESS!

I am a rank newbie, and had a lot of trouble at first. The guys on this forum really tried to help me, but in the end, I just had to figure it out for myself. That's VERY DISCOURAGING for newbies, and it shouldn't be like that, but such is life. I think Porteus will be very useful, now that I have it working.

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Re: Installed Porteus on a FAT formated HD - Problem

Post#15 by tome » 17 Sep 2014, 19:04

Very quick, nice "HOW TO" from newbie point of view. Could be useful. :Bravo:
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