Porteus on Vultr VPS? [Solved]
Posted: 23 Aug 2015, 03:02
Hi all,
Does anybody have some help they can share to install Porteus in a KVM instance like Vultr? There are instructions here for Slackware setup at Vultr:
http://hostingformula.net/using-gparted ... partition/
What I tried so far is:
1) prepared the partitions and ran the "Porteus Installer" to install to /dev/vda1. It hangs at "Booting..." when upon reboot.
2) mounted /dev/vda1 to /mnt/vda1 then ran "sh Porteus-installer-for-Linux.com". I can now "boot to the 1st hard drive", and see a custom menu I made by editing "porteus.cfg".
BUT, if I now unmount the original ISO image, it says "searching for porteus-v3.1-x86_64.sgn" file and won't load the OS. The .sgn file does exist on the VPS on the first partition (/dev/vda1).
3) I next rsync'd all the files from the ISO (/mnt/sr0) to the first partition, per the official thumb-drive install notes at "http://www.porteus.org/tutorials/37-ins ... -v-10.html" that said to copy the files, but that doesn't help. I was about to dd the data, but see in the thread at "http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php? ... ile#p35329" that that "dd-ing an (isohybrid) iso onto a drive will boot but you won't be able to save any files to the drive because it's readonly".
4) I then updated boot/syslinux/lilo.conf and re-ran Porteus-installer-for-Linux.com, per the instructions in lilo.conf, but that didn't update porteus.cfg.. and I see that it's actually using a bootloader called "extlinux". This other page mentions needing to use "mkinitrd":
http://docs.slackware.com/howtos:slackw ... proxmox-ve
helpful hints:
http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Boot_from ... ock_device
https://github.com/canfar/openstack-san ... enStack.md
But I don't see mkinitrd in the Porteus live boot ISO. Can I install it with USM? This Porteus forum thread mentions another way:
http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php? ... trd#p35982
I haven't yet tried yet the official GParted Live boot CD that the very first link above used to prep Slackware paritions at Vultr, but would that even matter? It looks like some mkinitrd magic needs done, but if so, why does plain Slackware boot fine at Vultr? Maybe I'm just missing something simple? Is there an easy way I can list actual boot devices in the porteus.cfg, or somehow with a cheatcode like "sgnfile"?
Thanks.
EDIT: The Porteus ISO already has virtio in the kernel for KVM, so my next route is to try either lilo or grub2, which should let me specify the correct block device to load from, I think.
Does anybody have some help they can share to install Porteus in a KVM instance like Vultr? There are instructions here for Slackware setup at Vultr:
http://hostingformula.net/using-gparted ... partition/
What I tried so far is:
1) prepared the partitions and ran the "Porteus Installer" to install to /dev/vda1. It hangs at "Booting..." when upon reboot.
2) mounted /dev/vda1 to /mnt/vda1 then ran "sh Porteus-installer-for-Linux.com". I can now "boot to the 1st hard drive", and see a custom menu I made by editing "porteus.cfg".
BUT, if I now unmount the original ISO image, it says "searching for porteus-v3.1-x86_64.sgn" file and won't load the OS. The .sgn file does exist on the VPS on the first partition (/dev/vda1).
3) I next rsync'd all the files from the ISO (/mnt/sr0) to the first partition, per the official thumb-drive install notes at "http://www.porteus.org/tutorials/37-ins ... -v-10.html" that said to copy the files, but that doesn't help. I was about to dd the data, but see in the thread at "http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php? ... ile#p35329" that that "dd-ing an (isohybrid) iso onto a drive will boot but you won't be able to save any files to the drive because it's readonly".
4) I then updated boot/syslinux/lilo.conf and re-ran Porteus-installer-for-Linux.com, per the instructions in lilo.conf, but that didn't update porteus.cfg.. and I see that it's actually using a bootloader called "extlinux". This other page mentions needing to use "mkinitrd":
http://docs.slackware.com/howtos:slackw ... proxmox-ve
helpful hints:
http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Boot_from ... ock_device
https://github.com/canfar/openstack-san ... enStack.md
But I don't see mkinitrd in the Porteus live boot ISO. Can I install it with USM? This Porteus forum thread mentions another way:
http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php? ... trd#p35982
I haven't yet tried yet the official GParted Live boot CD that the very first link above used to prep Slackware paritions at Vultr, but would that even matter? It looks like some mkinitrd magic needs done, but if so, why does plain Slackware boot fine at Vultr? Maybe I'm just missing something simple? Is there an easy way I can list actual boot devices in the porteus.cfg, or somehow with a cheatcode like "sgnfile"?
Thanks.
EDIT: The Porteus ISO already has virtio in the kernel for KVM, so my next route is to try either lilo or grub2, which should let me specify the correct block device to load from, I think.