Installing Several Porteus OS's To HDD

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Bootloadersconfuseme
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Installing Several Porteus OS's To HDD

Post#1 by Bootloadersconfuseme » 22 Sep 2014, 13:25

Hello
Thank you for Porteus

I need help in installing several Porteus 3 OS's to a blank internal second HDD

There is plenty of information on the Internet about Dual Booting

The Internet seems to be lacking information about installing and booting a selected OS from Several installed OS's

Thank you in advance

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francois
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Re: Installing Several Porteus OS's To HDD

Post#2 by francois » 22 Sep 2014, 19:48

Welcome on porteus forum boot...

In the following thread, in the first post there is an example of multiple porteus installations on the same partition using grub legacy as a bootloader:
http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php? ... 7395#p7395

If you are using syslinux as a bootloader the example above could be easily translated as a menu entry. I can work to provide menu entries for grub2 if you prefer.

Depending on the bootloader that you use the menu entries will be different. Which bootloader are you using now?
Prendre son temps, profiter de celui qui passe.

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Re: Installing Several Porteus OS's To HDD

Post#3 by Bootloadersconfuseme » 22 Sep 2014, 22:22

Thank you for the reply Francois
I recently found Porteus and like it very much, having an operating system free of software I will never use is the best thing about porteus for me
This is my first year looking at Linux OS's so I dont have much knowledge but am prepaired to study and try things out

Yesterday using a software for Windows named Easy2boot I managed to create a bootable flashdrive and install 5 x versions of Porteus 3 onto it, the procedure was straight forward as Easy2Boot allowed me to copy the 5 x Porteus ISO's directly into it and I am now able to boot any of 5 x Porteus OS's from my flashdrive Easy2Boot installed itself to my flashdrive and now shows up as a boot screen when I boot from my flashdrive

Having succeeded with the above I created an extended partition using the whole of a 400Gb spare second drive in my desktop, in that 400Gb Extended partition I created 5 x 12Gb Logical partitions with the Ext2 format (this was all done using GParted Live Disk)
From my flashdrive I was able to install a different Porteus 3 OS to each of the 5 partitions, these installations were carried out using the Porteus Live Disk Installer

Now the alarm bells started ringing in my head - I attempted to use OSL2000 Boot Manager that supposedly finds and boots any OS, I was only able to boot 1 of the 5 OS's no matter which one I selected from the OSL2000 Boot Screen

I have tried the five installations ticking the Porteus install bootloader box and I have deleted the 5 installations and re-installed them with the bootloader box left unticked, this is the stage I am up to, although I was never confident in my above work I thought it worth my while in trying, I have spent many an hour reading about multiple OS installations and am pretty sure I will need a script or two installed into something to get this all working

I have quickly read through the Link you posted for me and am not sure what to do when using Grub or any other bootloader

My main HDD and second HDD that I am trying to install multiple OS's to are controlled by physical switches so what I am now attempting does not need to disturb the OS on my main HDD as I can switch it off before booting

Francois - What method do you suggest I use to carry out the above ?

Should you reply in the next few hours I will not be online, I will check this topic later this morning

Thank you in advance

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Re: Installing Several Porteus OS's To HDD

Post#4 by francois » 23 Sep 2014, 01:49

1) Easy2boot was installing the iso of porteus on your device, and then added persistence for each of the iso copy that you had installed on your device. On this hard disk drive of yours, instead of installing iso copies, you would be better off installing only the content of the iso, which are as porteus is concerned, the /boot and the /porteus folders.

2) You should take advantage of one specificity of porteus over most of the other linux os. You can put many instances of porteus on the same partition by putting them into different folders withe the from= cheatcode. This way you will make a better use of the space on your hdd. There is really no need to have 5 partitions for 5 porteus installations.

3) I would like to be able to help you with OSL2000, but it is the first time that I am informed of its existance. This seemed a quite automated and closed system. There seems to be many bootloaders, and I suspect that some are only variations of the basic ones:
http://alternativeto.net/software/linux-loader/

In the linux world most bootloaders will permit booting of windows and linux oses. The more common ones are grub2, grub legacy, lilo and syslinux. Here on porteus we actually use syslinux and before we were using grub legacy. Personnally, I find that grub legacy is simpler, but syslinux is not much more different.

4) Here is the procedure to install two instances of porteus on your hdd with syslinux. This is for two porteus installations, just begin with two and then when it works, increment to five. The porteus.cfg file seems huge, but this is because for each os instance, there is an offer to boot into graphic mode, always fresh mode, ... . You can retain only the only the graphic mode if you want, this will simplify your installation:
http://www.porteus.org/tutorials/10-ins ... ition.html
Do not use the save.dat file. Just replace changes=/32/porteus/save.dat by changes=/32/porteus. Here, if you install different installations for the 32bit instead of one 32bit and one 64bit installations you can name the folders /32_xfce, /32_mate , /32_kde ... or the mnemonic tag that you prefer.

But before, be sure that you have backed up any precious data from you hdd (I understood that there was none now, as you just repartitioned that drive). Then you will have to reformat your hdd with ext4 filesystem. You can use gparted on the xfce version of porteus, which is a real nice partition manager. In command linux use fdisk -l to get to know whis is your hdd partion and which is your usb partition. Use gparted to reformat you sda1, sda2, ... sda5 partitions into one sda1 partion.

Try syslinux bootloadeer, if you are happy with it, you will just stick with it. If you want to use grub legacy or grub2, we can have a look at it, or just install it over syslinux.

Do not hesitate to ask any questions. We will be happy to answer you. :)
Last edited by francois on 23 Sep 2014, 13:46, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Installing Several Porteus OS's To HDD

Post#5 by Ed_P » 23 Sep 2014, 04:55

I've never heard of OSL2000 either but I do know that grub4DOS, a more modern version of legacy grub, can boot systems from multiple partition. Linux, Windows and everything in between. FWIW this is my grub4dos Porteus RazorQT menu as an example of booting a Porteus ISO from a partition other than C:

Code: Select all

# http://sourceforge.net/projects/grub4dos/
# Grub4DOS 0.4.5c 2013-03-03   http://code.google.com/p/grub4dos-chenall/downloads/list

splashimage=/ISOs/porteus3.bmp
color white/blue black/light-gray yellow/blue blue/yellow
# ****ground rrggbb   000000=black  ffffff=white  8-f = bright
foreground ffffff
background 000077
        
# Grub4DOS kernel parms - translated from Porteus RazorQT 3.0 iso  V:\boot\syslinux\porteus.cfg file.

default 0
set ISOx=Porteus-RazorQT-v3.0.1-x86_64.iso

title  |   Porteus-v3.0 64bit       |\n Porteus main menu 
root ()

title  |                            |\n 
root ()

title  | Graphics mode (Razor)      |\n\n Run Porteus the best way we can.\n Try to autoconfigure graphics card and use the maximum allowed resolution
find --set-root                       /ISOs/%ISOx%
map --heads=0 --sectors-per-track=0   /ISOs/%ISOx% (0xff) 
map --hook
root (0xff)
kernel /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz    from=/ISOs/%ISOx% changes=/porteus/changes/porteussave.dat extramod=/mnt/sda5/porteus/modules 
initrd /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz

title  | Always Fresh               |\n\n Normally Porteus saves all changes to the /porteus/changes/ directory on the\n boot media (if writable) and restores them next boot.  Use this option to\n start a fresh system, changes are not read from or written to any device
find --set-root                       /ISOs/%ISOx%
map --heads=0 --sectors-per-track=0   /ISOs/%ISOx% (0xff)
map --hook
root (0xff)
kernel /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz    from=/ISOs/%ISOx% nomagic base_only norootcopy
initrd /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz

title  | Copy To RAM                |\n\n Run Porteus the same as above, but first copy all data to RAM\n to get a huge speed increase (needs >512MB)
find --set-root                       /ISOs/%ISOx%
map --heads=0 --sectors-per-track=0   /ISOs/%ISOx% (0xff) 
map --hook
root (0xff)
kernel /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz    from=/ISOs/%ISOx% copy2ram
initrd /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz

title  | Text mode                  |\n\n Run Porteus in text mode and start the command prompt only
find --set-root                       /ISOs/%ISOx%
map --heads=0 --sectors-per-track=0   /ISOs/%ISOx% (0xff) 
map --hook
root (0xff)
kernel /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz    from=/ISOs/%ISOx% 3
initrd /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz

title  | Porteus as PXE server      |\n\n Run Porteus as usual, but also initialize a PXE server.\n This will allow you to boot Porteus on other computers over a network
find --set-root                       /ISOs/%ISOx%
map --heads=0 --sectors-per-track=0   /ISOs/%ISOx% (0xff) 
map --hook
root (0xff)
kernel /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz    from=/ISOs/%ISOx% pxe
initrd /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz

title  |                            |\n 
root ()

title  | PLoP BootManager           |\n\n Run the plop boot manager.\n This utility provides handy boot-USB options for machines with vintage/defective BIOS
find --set-root                       /ISOs/%ISOx%
map --heads=0 --sectors-per-track=0   /ISOs/%ISOx% (0xff) 
map --hook
root (0xff)
kernel /boot/syslinux/plpbt

title  | Boot from the first hd     |\n\n Don't start Porteus at all, rather run the operating system installed on the first partition of the hard drive
COM32 chain.c32
APPEND hd0 1
chainloader (hd0)+1

title  |                            |\n 
root ()

title  | ..return                   |\n\n Exit Porteus menu
configfile (bd)/menu.lst 

title  |----------------------------|\n 
root ()
Ed

Bootloadersconfuseme
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Re: Installing Several Porteus OS's To HDD

Post#6 by Bootloadersconfuseme » 24 Sep 2014, 13:43

Thank you for your help Francois and Ed_P

I apologise for not posting sooner, having given my needs much thought I decided to throw my PC out of the window and revert to using pen and paper
Having given things much thought I have decided to first install a fully loaded version of a Linux OS that has Grub2 built into it and then attempt to install multiple Porteus OS's on seperate logical partitions booting with Grub2
The Linux ISO that i will use for the first installation is downloading as I type
You are going to be hearing from me again in the near future

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Re: Installing Several Porteus OS's To HDD

Post#7 by francois » 25 Sep 2014, 14:21

@bootloader...
It could have been more simple to resort to gparted for partitioning and grubconfig to install the bootloader from the usb porteus key to install everything. Grubconfig (which installs grub legacy) is really easy to use, and its my favorite bootloader. Other linux distribution are sometimes tedious and long to install. For grubconfig and porteus:
http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=946

Though other linux systems are quite interesting to explore too. Elementary os (a ubuntu clone with a somewhat mac interface) is a simple to use candidate, though it will rapidly take much space on your hdd if you use it regularly. Think about a 20 gig partition for Elementary. :twisted:
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Re: Installing Several Porteus OS's To HDD

Post#8 by Bootloadersconfuseme » 30 Sep 2014, 07:43

francois, than you once again for the help, I have been testing out a few different methods to reach my targets, I have other computer problems that have taken up all my spare time but hope to be back at it soon

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Re: Installing Several Porteus OS's To HDD

Post#9 by francois » 30 Sep 2014, 09:49

We will be pleased to be there for you whenever you come back. :wink:
Prendre son temps, profiter de celui qui passe.

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