UEFI and Legacy - at the same time?

[Ed_P]

Bicephale if you want to boot multiple Linux systems on multiple hardware systems an app that installs grub2 on a FAT32 MBR USB drive is a reasonable approach which your YUMi app seems to do. I suspect that approach also supports large USB drives partitioned to handle large files.

If you want to boot a Linux system on multiple hardware systems Porteus 4.0 does that and 5.0 will also. Just follow the steps I've posted previously and it will boot on BIOS and UEFI systems. My Porteus 4.0 USB drive boots on my BIOS Acer netbook and my UEFI Dell notebook. My experimental Porteus 5.0 USB drive does also. These are all 64-bit systems and hardware.

To boot on 32-bit hardware and 64-bit hardware try 586/686 Linux systems.

To make a customized bootable Porteus system use these parameters to create the ISO file. The customized files are in the NEW folder.

Code: Select all

mkisofs -o NEW.iso -v -l -J -joliet-long  -R -D -A Porteus -V Porteus \
 -no-emul-boot -boot-info-table -boot-load-size 4 \
 -b boot/syslinux/isolinux.bin -c boot/syslinux/isolinux.boot NEW

[Bicephale]

There was an old thread mentioned and i just seen this was already debated vigorously long ago, so i gather the matter is set as well.

I wouldn't want to cause further agravation although Linux (Slax, Porteus, APorteus) starts loading then stalls over some "not found" item(s).

Thank you for your time.

[Ed_P]

Some Linux distros are designed such that their sole purpose for booting is to be installed, which I personally don't care for, but Porteus is designed to be useful even when booted as an ISO.

And with the million different hardware configurations there will be distros that will fail to boot on some hardware due to "not found" or other problems. And for those distros the best ones have good support staffs and/or good forums to help overcome the problems.

When I started with Porteus I had no Linux knowledge (and I still don't) but the great help and support from the techs here helped me resolve each problem I encountered and that is why I'm still here and why I try to help other newbies.

[Bicephale]

I keep getting an impression i'd have to "spin" my own .ISO while also mastering what's hard-wired inside the ramdisk, which i'm pleased to call a "ramdisk" just because it reminds me of PC-DOS v3.3 on a pair of 360 KB diskettes, stuffed with DOS internet utilities, since even those pilots weren't actually integrated to the OS just yet... Lots of changes occured since then, Linux and now bootloaders, which makes me want to post this YUMI/GrUB excerpt of code intended to AUTO-Magically handling between Legacy/BiOS/CSM vs UEFi/ESP:

if [ "$grub_platform" = "efi" ]; then
export grub_normal_menu_title="YUMI UEFI [Grub ${grub_version}]"
else
export grub_normal_menu_title="YUMI BIOS [Grub ${grub_version}]"
fi

Now THAT is what i expect from any OS, portable/live or otherwise. And yes, booting is essential, evidently. We got the modular organisation, it's simple enough to prove useful in the hands of non-experts and hence that's some feature Porteus should promote/protect at all times. Then there's the problem of packages selection. It could fit so well in COPY2RAM mode on so many more machines than most other flavours i think, what a shame!

Still about the YUMi menu with multiple flavour scenarios, here's some other side-note i kept on my to-do list:

set root --label MULTIBOOT --hint hd0,msdos1

I gather the "hint" directive is only that, an optional hint which hits or misses. GrUB still provides a comfy CLi environment anyway, especially the recent 2.05/2.06 versions it seems.

What's so great about it is that Porteus modules would fit nicely in auxiliary repositories of the flash drive that never get touched by YUMi while updating after new .ISOs are published. Keeping up-to-date wouldn't imply re-copying those modules again, not to mention captures like from HardInfo that i wish were always part of Porteus, much the same of PlOP for similar reasons. At least it wouldn't hurt to import inspiration from the people of YUMi when it comes to having 32 AND 64 bits choices on a same flash-drive. And now i've shown that YUMi is ready to pick either BiOS or EFi without a need for human intervention, leaving our minds free for more noble challenges, eventually.

In the mean time, how do you like 'Etcher'? It's cross-platform and over-simplified; perfect for future converts...