Porteus to Micro-SD-CARD boot - easy!

Post#1 by **nanZor** » 10 Jun 2019, 01:29

Got a few machines that will boot from a micro-SD-card, along with all the other options.

Wanted to use USB iso burners, but of course they don't recognize the micro-sd-cards, which usually show up as mmcblk devices.

Solution: Just temporarily use a USB <> SD-card adapter to do the burn.

Using a little Sabrent model adapter, i had no problem burning Porteus using it's own usb-tools. I tried it directly from a mounted iso and running either the bash shell installer, or the windows installer. Once I was done I had no further need for the adapter, and used the machine's own sd-card slot to boot from.

And of course once you have Porteus booted by hook or by crook, you can use the Live-USB-Creator along with the usb<>sd card adapter and go that way.

A few of the Intel Computesticks allow for booting from the micro-sd-card slot, (they actually show up as hard drives in the bios), and this little adapter trick made doing a bootable sd-card very easy. Trick might come in handy if you are putting Porteus on mini-pc's and other small hardware.

Needless to say, I'm watching my sd-card writes by using either other external storage, or if using a savefile, using the EXIT: cheatcode. I use large cards just to provide more cells for wear-leveling, and most are tested with the Linux F3 or Windows H2WTEST utility to help spot cheats, counterfeits and so forth.

Pretty stoked it was so easy with the built-in USB tools and an adapter to fool it into thinking an mmcblk device was an sdX.

Post#2 by **brokenman** » 13 Jun 2019, 23:42

A few of the Intel Computesticks allow for booting from the micro-sd-card slot, (they actually show up as hard drives in the bios), and this little adapter trick made doing a bootable sd-card very easy.

Thanks. I have one of these and I hadn't thought of that.

Post#3 by **nanZor** » 14 Jun 2019, 08:40

As an aside about sd-card vs micro-sd-card capabilities ---

This trick may be useful for both, BUT just so some who try this don't blame Porteus:

Some computers that seem to work with SD-Cards from a windows standpoint, may not work too well with Linux. So even if you use the util to burn an sd-card boot of Porteus, and it croaks or crashes, don't blame Porteus or your burn right off the bat. Get a second opinion like I did and watch an sd-card burn of say Knoppix crash too. Even with a known good fast card.

"Micro"-sd-card boots seem much more reliable for the time being.

Just my experience, but a heads up not to be discouraged if the physically larger SD-cards, and the sometimes funky sd-card hardware give you trouble. Try the tiny micro card if you have that option.

Oh, and don't lose it in the carpet!

Post#4 by **francois** » 15 Jun 2019, 02:14

Please nanZor, stick on this forum. You have plenty of interesting knowledge.

Post#5 by **Ed_P** » 15 Jun 2019, 04:11

If you have an Intel Computestick that runs Windows 10 you can add Porteus to it as a boot option by:

Install Grub2Win on the Intel Computestick's Windows system.
Copy the Porteus ISO to the Intel Computestick
Boot the Porteus ISO via Grub2Win.

Post#6 by **nanZor** » 24 Jun 2019, 07:14

Yup, that's possible. I tend to keep windows and unix bootloaders far apart, so I boot via usb or the micro-usb if allowed.