How can I boot an iso with grub4dos?

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trueriver
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Location: Manchester, England

#41 Post by trueriver »

Scooby wrote: ... Easy2boot is essentially Grub4dos ...
That is not quite how I would describe it. I'd prefer to say that easy2boot is a set of powerful extensions to grub4dos; or that it is a friendly front end for it: e2b does everything g4d does, but handles many things in a much more user friendly way.

grub4dos as downloaded from sourceforge relies on static menu files (*.lst). You have to know what the isos will be when you write the .lst file.

What easy2boot adds is the user-friendly facility to build those menus dynamically. The *.mnu files facility comes from easy2boot, and so does the awesome facility to dynamically build a *.lst file from the .../AUTO subdirectory.

Think of Newton and his comment about standing on the shoulders of giants - e2b stands on the shoulders of g4d.

River~~

nooby
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Re: How can I boot an iso with grub4dos?

#42 Post by nooby »

der-schutzhund wrote:Hi,

can anyone tell how the menu.lst should look for grub4dos to boot an ISO from the hard drive?

Several Isos are on the HD in the / ISOS /

Greetings

Wolfgang
Guys I do love this thread. But as you may guess
I barely get what you guys write about.

The title of the thread and the first post
is a bit misleading how the thread gets into
Easy2boot that allow iso boot on USB
but not on HD if it is ntfs?

The OP is about booting from HD
Very good taht E2B boot iso from USB
mimicking how DVD drive can boot a live iso.

So could the OP maybe add to the title USB
and easy2boot so the search works better :)

No criticism this is a very important thread and
I love that you guys sort all the possibilities so
a lot of people can use it later. Excitign indeed
but AFAIK Barry have told us there is not in the
script a possibility for Puppy to boot from HD
without first sifting out linuz and initrd so the script
find it. E2B can do it on USB then? But not on NTFS HD?
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

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sunburnt
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#43 Post by sunburnt »

Scooby, nooby, and trueriver; I think the end purpose will be to post a menu.mnu.

HD PATA, SATA, or USB is the same, Flash media cards and USB are different, and CD.

A boot profile for Puppy on a HD, one for flash, and one CD-DVD.
In addition to this, 3 more profiles for booting to ram for the above.
And 3 more rescue profiles to boot without a Save file.

So 9 basic profile templates, only the drive paths need be changed.


# I realized I said for a boot handler to look for a .mnu file when it should be external.
I ment a profile file for a boot manager to find and use.
Kinda like FreeDesktop`s .desktop menu files, a boot menu would be made from them.

Scooby
Posts: 599
Joined: Sat 03 Mar 2012, 09:04

Re: How can I boot an iso with grub4dos?

#44 Post by Scooby »

nooby wrote: Excitign indeed
but AFAIK Barry have told us there is not in the
script a possibility for Puppy to boot from HD
without first sifting out linuz and initrd so the script
find it. E2B can do it on USB then? But not on NTFS HD?
Les Kerf wrote: I tried the Easy2Boot Grub4Dos method with a hard drive and it worked for me. I mentioned it in the other Easy2Boot thread.
Les
Easy2Boot apparently works on HD as well!

I tried it partly and can verify it.

If you have Grub4Dos installed on your HD then if you add Easy2Boot to root it will
boot to grldr and then menu.lst. For auto feature just copy a puppy linux ISO to
_ISO/Linux/AUTO

nooby
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Location: SwedenEurope

#45 Post by nooby »

Scooby much appreciated. I need to read up on what it is
and download that program then. Are you sure you tested
on NTFS and not a ext2 or ext3 partition? Would be cool if the OP
could confirm it worked for him too :)

Scooby wrote:How did it go for der-schutzhund( what does it mean anyway? shit-dog?)
Meine Deutch? ist nicht da :) My German does not exist Is not there anymore.

i tried to learn German at school for three semesters double speed so
it is 6 such terminen But it was gone in a few years due to me knew
none to practice it with and me did not travel abroad and too lazy
to practice at home .

Let me guess der-schutzhund = The Watch Dog.

So I ask Google translate it for me. the protection dog
So maybe it is a special version of such dogs trained
to be good at knowing whom are aggressive and whom
are not aggressive? I just guess.
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

nooby
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Location: SwedenEurope

#46 Post by nooby »

rcrsn51 wrote:Although the instructions here are for USB drives, they should also work with a hard drive partition, provided that it is contiguous. So you would need a clean FAT32 partition, then copy the ISO's into it.

However, this method will not work with Puppy ISO's.
You know such things much better than me so
that is why I am skeptical to if it help the OP at all.

Maybe a new thread will better so many more can find out about
what Easy2Boot really can do. I would want to boot a lot of isos
that now only boot from ext2 and using grub2 so if that could be done
using E2B that would be cool.

Have you really booed Puppy on NTFS using only iso
and using the E2B and on the internal HT What code?
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

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rcrsn51
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#47 Post by rcrsn51 »

nooby wrote:
rcrsn51 wrote:Although the instructions here are for USB drives, they should also work with a hard drive partition, provided that it is contiguous. So you would need a clean FAT32 partition, then copy the ISO's into it.

However, this method will not work with Puppy ISO's.
Since I made that statement last week, there have been some new developments regarding booting Puppy off ISOs. So I have updated this.

But my procedures still do not work with NTFS.

nooby
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#48 Post by nooby »

thanks I got into this dreaded Error 60 the file need to be
contiguous and I have no wine so does not puppy has
some program or a trick that can make a file contiguous
on fat32 if one move it to and fro or something?
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

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rcrsn51
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#49 Post by rcrsn51 »

@nooby: I tested ISObooter from here on a fresh NTFS-formatted flash drive and it worked with both Slacko and Xubuntu. So it should work on a hard drive, assuming that there are no issues with discontiguity..

If you want to look more at this, please post a message here.
Last edited by rcrsn51 on Sun 10 Feb 2013, 04:43, edited 1 time in total.

nooby
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#50 Post by nooby »

Here is what I remember but I fail to get what Puppyluvr writes

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 041#510041

The "Copy to/ Copy back" method does a perfect defrag.
So what am I supposed to do?
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

der-schutzhund
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Location: Blomberg / Germany

#51 Post by der-schutzhund »

Hello to all!
First a brief explanation of "the protection dog":
My hobby is working with dogs. I train dogs for security. Not for the police action but for sporting events!

What about the participation here shows this threat has raised an interesting question: How can be booted Puppyisos of different stores, formats?
Since my English is not really good, I must say that now I'm a little confused about the various solutions, approaches, and options Listing however. Maybe we can create a summary if everything works so far?
For me, it would be important that the iso can be booted even if it was pushed by a modified version! Since I work with have the Lazy sfs be found!

@nooby,

i tested it and it works sometimes!
Actually it is a nice solution but I could not understand why an iso worked sometimes and sometimes not if I copied it again in auto. Even though I previously all isos and put it back in did not copy all ran. It would be important for my application that I write about the same isos sometimes with a modified version! Meanwhile, I have resigned myself that it's probably not possible to boot puppyisos sure if they are overwritten several times with modified versions. Even if that would work would have started the so-Lazy-iso still find LP2_ .. sfs. That did not work even with a different approach since the start of the Isos a new virtual disk has been created in the budget were not the sfs.

regards

Wolfgang

nooby
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#52 Post by nooby »

Wolfgang,

seems they need the contiguous for to work and when one
load a new version the nit corrupt? That is why people suggest
ext2 or ext3 so it works better. I have gone over to the one that
rcrsn51 do based on the Scooby way to set it up
and if one format it each time one do a change then it seems to work
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

der-schutzhund
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Location: Blomberg / Germany

#53 Post by der-schutzhund »

do you know if Windows programs in wine under ext2 work just as well as under FAT32 or NTFS?
Perhaps you should then not be limited to grub4dos but describe each combination is a safe solution?
It would be important, as I said, iso that can be overridden and sfs be found!
For example, the possible combinations (if it works):
- USB flash drive, Fat32, grub4dos
- USB flash drive, Fat32, Grub2
- USB flash drive, NTFS, grub4dos
- USB flash drive, NTFS, Grub2
- USB flash drive, ext2, grub4dos
- USB flash drive, ext2, Grub2

- HD, FAT32, grub4dos
- HD, FAT32, Grub2
- HD, NTFS, grub4dos
- HD, NTFS, Grub2
- HD, ext2, grub4dos
- HD ext2, Grub2

etc.

regards

Wolfgang

nooby
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#54 Post by nooby »

Hopefully rcrsn51 and others good at such can help you decide
which combinations works best. I am only a curious user
I know almost nothing sorry.
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

JMX
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#55 Post by JMX »

I have successfully used rcrsn51's excellent streamlined procedure to boot iso files on my Asus EEE SDHC card.

Here is how I have been able to boot directly to .iso files on my internal harddrive.

First, no changes were needed to my existing grub4dos installation. (I had previously installed grub4dos by creating a bootable DOS partition with its appropriate config.sys file). This way, nothing is ever written to the MBR.

I then created a folder on partition 2 of my harddrive (sda2) and named it "isos", and then I put all of the desired .iso files into that folder.

Then, for testing, (before running the isobooter script) I simply added this entry to my already existing menu.lst:

title wary-5.4.90 ISObooter
partnew (hd0,3) 0x00 (hd0,1)/isos/wary-5.4.90.iso
map --heads=0 --sectors-per-track=0 (hd0,1)/isos/wary-5.4.90.iso (0xff)
map --hook
root (0xff)
kernel /vmlinuz pmedia=ataflash pfix=fsck
initrd /initrd.gz

It worked. And the creation of the save file on the harddrive worked exactly as expected. By default, the save file goes at the root (or in a folder) on the partition of the device that grub4dos does its initial bootup (in my example, grub4dos is initially booted on sda2 which is (hd0,1)).

I then simply edit the path statements in the isobooter file (which in this example is located at the root of sda2) to create a new accessible file named isomenu.lst to harmonize with my overall mapping.

It is no longer necessary to extract any iso files!

If the bootup harddrive has no more that 3 primary partitions on it, and if the iso files are not fragmented, then the "partnew" feature of grub4dos can do its magic.

cinclus_cinclus
Posts: 68
Joined: Sun 22 Feb 2009, 10:00

possible device-position for being used by "partnew"

#56 Post by cinclus_cinclus »

There are situations were the fourth of the four possible positions for primary partitions is already in use (e.g. after removing a primary partition) - though another one is free for being used by the partnew command .
JMX wrote: ...
First, no changes were needed to my existing grub4dos installation. (I had previously installed grub4dos by creating a bootable DOS partition with its appropriate config.sys file). This way, nothing is ever written to the MBR.

I then created a folder on partition 2 of my harddrive (sda2) and named it "isos", and then I put all of the desired .iso files into that folder.

Then, for testing, (before running the isobooter script) I simply added this entry to my already existing menu.lst:

title wary-5.4.90 ISObooter
partnew (hd0,3) 0x00 (hd0,1)/isos/wary-5.4.90.iso
map --heads=0 --sectors-per-track=0 (hd0,1)/isos/wary-5.4.90.iso (0xff)
map --hook
root (0xff)
kernel /vmlinuz pmedia=ataflash pfix=fsck
initrd /initrd.gz
...
If the bootup harddrive has no more that 3 primary partitions on it, and if the iso files are not fragmented, then the "partnew" feature of grub4dos can do its magic.
"partnew (hd0,3)" implies - as by the requirements of rcrsn51 - that (hd0,3) really is the unused fourth primary partition. But this requirement is only sufficient for using the partnew command. Necessary and sufficient is the requirement that partnew uses any unused primary-device-position!


Example:

Code: Select all

# fdisk -l /dev/sdb
Disk /dev/sdb: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders, total 488397168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xa59f6637

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *        2048    31455231    15726592    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb2        31455270    67135634    17840182+   b  W95 FAT32
/dev/sdb4        67153918   488388607   210617345    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdb5        67153920    71307263     2076672   82  Linux swap
/dev/sdb6        71309312    92266495    10478592   83  Linux
/dev/sdb7        92268544   113240063    10485760   83  Linux
/dev/sdb8       113256448   134227967    10485760   83  Linux
/dev/sdb9       134230016   174346239    20058112   83  Linux
/dev/sdb10      174353508   199511234    12578863+  83  Linux
/dev/sdb11      199516160   224681983    12582912   83  Linux
/dev/sdb12      224685153   256140359    15727603+  83  Linux
/dev/sdb13      256140423   319050899    31455238+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb14      319053824   327442431     4194304   83  Linux
/dev/sdb15      327452958   369382544    20964793+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb16      369385472   411328511    20971520   83  Linux
Here (hd1,2) (=/dev/sdb3) would be the only unused position that could be used by partnew.

Comment:
/dev/sdb4 cannot be moved to /dev/sdb3 by the fdisk command: "fix partition order".

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earl
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#57 Post by earl »

Scooby wrote:The principle of this solution is the same as I present in

HOWTO create easy multi-boot USB Puppy from Linux
HOWTO create easy multi-boot USB Puppy from Windows


Observe! This solution requires, as stated in links above, the ISO file to be unfragmented on disk. If you downloaded rmprepusb you got wincontig also.
Go to /Program Files/RMPrepUSB/WINCONTIG and click on wincontig.exe. Then add folder /ISOS and execute a defragment action.
If I remember correctly this can be done with Shift+F2 when RMPrepUSB is started.

I tested around a little. Note I have my Grub4Dos bootrecord on USB and not on HD.
@rcrsn51 and Scooby,

Very elegant, I have been trying to use various methods and isobooter is by far the best. I write this on lighthouse distro, on a USB drive with 20 other distro's... again nicily done!!

Earl

nooby
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Location: SwedenEurope

#58 Post by nooby »

I really like Isobooter so I feel grateful
that you worked out how to set it up
and that you shared that with us rsrcn51.

Much appreciated.

Scooby maybe your way is good too
but I where not intelligent enough to get it.

My bad most likely others support you so no big deal.
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

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session
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Booting Debian with Grub4Dos

#59 Post by session »

I'm running a full install of puppy on a hard drive with a single ext2 partition.

Code: Select all

title Precise Puppy 5.7.1 Retro
  uuid 557f5f5b-a96f-4dc3-92e9-1276733a5d23
  kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda1 ro
Using grub4dos, it's easy to try out different puppies frugally:

Code: Select all

title Frugal Puppy
  kernel /frugal/vmlinuz psubdir=frugal pmedia=atahd
  initrd /frugal/initrd.gz
It took trial-and-error, but Ubuntu live-cd variants can be booted with grub4dos similarly:

Code: Select all

title Frugal Ubuntu
  kernel /frugal-ubuntu/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/frugal-ubuntu/frugal-ubuntu.iso
  initrd /frugal-ubuntu/initrd.lz
...as long as vmlinuz and initrd are extracted from the .iso and correctly pointed to in menu.lst

Debian is different. This is the closest config I've gotten toward successfully starting Linux Mint Debian Edition:

Code: Select all

title Frugal Debian
  kernel /frugal-debian/vmlinuz boot=live findiso=/frugal-debian/frugal-debian.iso
  initrd /frugal-debian/initrd.lz
which results in "unable to open /dev/sda" messages when trying to access the live medium. So the question is... Using grub4dos, can I boot a Debian-based distribution from the hard drive... without needing an extra fat32 partition?
[color=green]Primary[/color] - Intel Pentium 4 2.40GHz, 571MB RAM, ATI Radeon 7000. Linux Mint 17 Qiana installed.
[color=blue]Secondary[/color] - Pentium 3 533MHz, 385MB RAM, ATI Rage 128 Pro ULTRA TF. Precise Puppy 5.7.1 Retro full install.

gcmartin

Can a contiguous ISO be discovered prior to boot?

#60 Post by gcmartin »

"File NOT contiguous" This is a known, possibly "well-known" problem in use of the ISO booting.
... This solution requires, as stated in links above, the ISO file to be unfragmented on disk. If you downloaded rmprepusb you got wincontig also.
Go to /Program Files/RMPrepUSB/WINCONTIG and click on wincontig.exe. Then add folder /ISOS and execute a defragment action.
If I remember correctly this can be done with Shift+F2 when RMPrepUSB is started. ...
This excerpt re-iterates this problem and offers a Windows approach which intends to resolve the contiguous needs of the boot process.

Question
  • Is there a Puppy utility, anywhere, which can "flag" a disjointed ISO file on USB/HDD?
  • Is there an equivalent of "defragment" for ISO folder-files which exist which can reduce the contiguous errs at boot?
  • Can the Windows utiliity mentioned be run in Wine resulting in resolved ISO layouts on disc?
  • Can the Windows utility be reverse engineered for Puppy 'native" use?
  • Is there a Linux way of writing the /ISO folder's contents where all ISO within will be written thru the I/O subsystem with the subsystem properly handling the ISO writes to USB/HDD?
  • Lastly, is any of this documented anywhere?
The idea, here, is whether there is a way to tell if the ISO is properly conditioned prior to any time-eating boot attempts and analysis.

Thanks in advance

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