Unable to boot Porteus

Post#1 by **Ansh025** » 25 Apr 2020, 10:37

Hi everyone ,
I am looking for a portable distro to rub from USB.

I recently installed Porteus5.0 from the script method on Linux. The installation was successful but I am unable to boot from USB drive.

I have selected the usb as first priority but the bootloader boots directly to the OS. When I manually select boot device, there is no option for a USB. It looks like the usb is not detected as bootable.

This has happened quite a few times. It looks like my system does not boot from such copy-paste installation distros like I tried Slax also and gave up because of this. Slax also has a similar process of copy pasting folders and then running a script. Again, there also the installer prompted success.

I am on a uefi system with deepin Linux on my hard drive.
Secureboot and Fastboot are disabled.

Post#2 by **beny** » 25 Apr 2020, 12:31

hi, via deepin can you mount the usb device sudo fdisk -l give you the devices name and you see if the usb is on the list,if you have the name, mount it in /mnt and run the linux installer inside the boot directory:cd /mnt/your mount directory/boot/linux installer if you use deepin,

Post#3 by **Ansh025** » 25 Apr 2020, 18:40

Ok I will try and update you

Post#4 by **Ed_P** » 25 Apr 2020, 18:46

Ansh025 wrote: ↑
25 Apr 2020, 10:37
This has happened quite a few times. It looks like my system does not boot from such copy-paste installation distros like I tried Slax also and gave up because of this.

Not an install problem, a boot problem, I tweaked the title to reflex that. And 5.0 hasn't been released, what you have is a release candidate test system, 5.0rc1.

You followed the USB_INSTALLATION.txt file instructions on the ISO file?

Post#5 by **Ansh025** » 26 Apr 2020, 03:46

Yes but I manually copied the folders from file-manager.

Post#6 by **Ed_P** » 26 Apr 2020, 04:32

Copying with a file manager is fine so long as you included the hidden files. But what makes the drive bootable is running the .exe or .com file after the files have been copied.

For EFI systems the EFI folder has to be on a FAT32 partition and since Porteus runs fine on FAT32 systems I format my whole USB drive as FAT32 before copying everything to it.

Post#7 by **Ansh025** » 26 Apr 2020, 07:28

Initially, I formatted with Fat32 but couldn't boot. It was because of the USB mounted at /media by default.
Then I used ext4 because the install.txt in docs folder said that it can't save changes automatically to a Fat32 partition.
But now after your suggestion and doing both, it works. Thanks for your help.

Post#8 by **Ed_P** » 26 Apr 2020, 15:13

On your USB drive to save changes you will need to create a porteussave.dat file. While you can save everything in it you only really need it to save system changes and tweaks. Downloads and pictures and etc can be saved on the drive directly and accessed by Porteus.

Porteus