Porteus n00B with problem of boot= cheatcode

[goossbears]

Have gone through the steps listed at http://www.porteus.org/tutorials/26-gen ... -them.html and http://www.porteus.org/component/conten ... tcode.html to use the boot= cheatcode and still cannot get my Porteus ISO to work as described

FWIW, I've regularly used Knoppix before, and Knoppix has the consecutive-boot options

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knoppix: knoppix tohd=/dev/sdX

then

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knoppix: knoppix fromhd=/dev/sdX

The Porteus version I'm using is the Porteus-XFCE-v3.1-i486.iso cp'd onto /dev/sdb1/porteus/ as porteus.iso. This porteus.iso then had its vmlinuz and initrd.xz extracted to /dev/sdb1/porteus/boot/ as instructed in the 2nd above link using mloop.
When I go ahead and use the imaged Porteus-XFCE-v3.1-i486.iso liveCD to boot the PC and select the first liveCD boot option with either the 'from=/mnt/sdb1' cheatcode, the 'from=/dev/sdb1/porteus' cheatcode, the 'from=/mnt/sdb1' cheatcode, or the 'from=/mnt/sdb1/porteus' cheatcode at the end of the [Tab] line, I keep receiving this message:

Starting init script <http://www.porteus.org/>
^ searching for porteus-v3.1-i486.sgn file
^ from= cheatcode is incorrect, press enter to search through all devices

Suggestions to properly fix this issue?
Knoppix's

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knoppix fromhd=/dev/sdb1

boot entry works perfectly, so why not have a similar success with the Porteus 'boot= ' cheatcode??

[francois]

Welcome on porteus board goossbear.
Please provide your complete syslinux entry? It is difficult to judge with the few information you have provided.

The porteus cheatcode is from= and not fromhd=.

[ncmprhnsbl]

so you're using a CD iso to boot an iso on a usb/hd?

from the tutorial your cheatcode should look more like this:

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KERNEL /dev/sdb1/boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=/dev/sdb1/porteus/boot/initrd.xz from=/dev/sdb1/Porteus-XFCE-v3.1-i486.iso

may only need

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from=/dev/sdb1/Porteus-XFCE-v3.1-i486.iso

you might consider making your usb bootable so you can edit/save the syslinux/porteus.cfg . if possible

[goossbears]

so you're using a CD iso to boot an iso on a usb/hd?

from the tutorial your cheatcode should look more like this:

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KERNEL /dev/sdb1/boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=/dev/sdb1/porteus/boot/initrd.xz from=/dev/sdb1/Porteus-XFCE-v3.1-i486.iso

may only need

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from=/dev/sdb1/Porteus-XFCE-v3.1-i486.iso

you might consider making your usb bootable so you can edit/save the syslinux/porteus.cfg . if possible

Perhaps this may better help.

- The Porteus boot media is a non-rewritable liveCD rather than a CD-R/W or USB drive

- The hard drive has Salix 14.1 already installed, with the XFCE desktop. The Salix boot manager is LILO, it is installed onto the Master Boot Record of the drive, and the LILO cfg entries are in the first partition's /etc/lilo.conf file. Didn't add the recommended KERNEL and APPEND options for /dev/sdb1 to this /etc/lilo.conf file though.

- The initial liveCD's Porteus boot screen with a lighthouse-harbor graphic shows "Porteus-3.1 32bit" and offers the top-level boot options
-- Graphics mode (XFCE)
-- Always fresh
-- Copy To RAM
-- Text mode
-- Porteus as PXE server
-- PLoP BootManager
-- Boot from the first hd

The bottom boot screen description for my chosen 'Graphics mode XFCE' option is

Run Porteus the best way we can. Try to autoconfigure graphics card and use the maximum allowed resolution.

It's default (syslinux?) edit options are

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vmlinuz initrd.xz changes=/porteus timezone=America/<my exact timezone>

- Decided to make things a bit simpler by running Porteus using the liveCD with the default 'Graphics mode XFCE' option just above, then resizing hd partitions using Porteus's GParted in order to increase drivespace on /dev/sda1, and then repeating the Porteus ISO image copying and boot files extraction to /mnt/sda1 (instead of to /mnt/sdb1) exactly as described in the previous post. Perhaps the Porteus ISO cp'ing and boot files extraction were somehow defective the 1st time around?

- I found the relevant cheatcodes for SLAX, a Slack-based distro similar to Porteus, at http://www.pendrivelinux.com/slax-cheatcodes/ as follows

from=/dev/hda1/slax.iso
from=path/to/slax.iso
from=/dev/hda1
from=path/to/slax/

To load SLAX data from different place instead of the boot device. First example will search for slax.iso, only on hda1. Second example will search for 'path/to/slax.iso' on all devices. The first device containing the path/file is used. Third example expects that the ISO is unpacked to hda1. Fourth example searches through all disks for a directory 'path/to/slax' and expects the contents of unpacked ISO in there.

- Following one of the above SLAX cheatcode examples, I rebooted the PC using the same Porteus liveCD and on the edit line of the 'Graphics mode XFCE' option, specified

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vmlinuz initrd.xz changes=/porteus timezone=America/<my exact timezone> from=/dev/sda1/porteus/porteus.iso

When booting when this edit option, I finally saw this message:

Starting init script <http://www.porteus.org/>
^ searching for porteus-v3.1-i486.sgn file
^ using Porteus data from /mnt/isoloop/porteus
...
... <desired modules loading>
...
^ copying content of /mnt/isoloop/porteus/rootcopy directory
^ changing root directory
...

This seems to have fixed the issue I presented. Really don't mind at all using Porteus to create, save, and access data files alongside those from Salix in /mnt/sda1. And I can also use Porteus's 'Text mode' menu option with the same last boot= entry to boot into text mode, followed by using 'startx' (but not 'init 4'!) to get into X just like for XFCE in Salix.

Next step is to fix the Unified Slackware Package Manager "Missing Database Files!" issue I'm getting. This USM pkg manager perhaps similar to Knoppix's Synaptic/APT?

Thanks for the replies

[Bogomips]

This USM pkg manager perhaps similar to Knoppix's Synaptic/APT?

Not similar. Presupposes a certain amount of Slackware knowledge, and that you know what you are doing, and which as a Newbie you don't. Best thing, is to just suck it and see.

P.S. If using the GUI best thing is not to take advantage of the option of removing files you don't want. If you are as adept as you seem to be, try to wean yourself from GUI as soon as your knowledge of Porteus allows you to. 8)

[brokenman]

The first thing to do in USM is to update: usm -u all

Which version of Porteus are you using?