Grub4dos Horribly Out Dated!

[s243a]

I get that Grub4dos is small and simple but my understanding is that it is based on legacy grub which hasn't been supported since 2013. Additionally, grub4does seems to have issues with large USB3 drives and cannot read NTFS file system labels. Finally most online help for grub is for Grub 2 rather than legacy grub and links to lagacy grub seem to be broken on the official grub website.

In my opinion the weakest point of puppylinux is the tools that it has available for installation.

I understand that for USB boot there are third party tools that work well and the isos boot well from CDs. However, being able to easily set-up multi boot systems will go a long way towards attracting new users.

Most newer puppies seem to be using syslinux to boot isos with Menus so perhaps what is need for puppy is a syslinux wizard to set up menus for multi-boot.

For my reference in tahrpup 6.0.2 here are some commands that don't work

Code: Select all

ls dev //Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition
groot (hd0,0) // Error 27: Unrecognized Command. Grub4 does doesn't seem to dinstiguish between the grub root and the linux root.
ioprobe  // Unrecognized command

here are some that work.

Code: Select all

find +1 //Lists available dirives. When I try this my USB external does not show up.
debug on // works but I'm not sure what I use it for.
oarttype //Output eg. "Partition type for (hd2,0) is 0xC
ext
find --set-root /ntldr //works but I can't replace ntldr with something like ext2.
configfile menu.lst //Returns back to the menu from the grub command line

Here are some grub4dos links that I found:
http://www.linux-sxs.org/administration/grub-cmd.html
https://sites.google.com/a/rmprepusb.co ... nds-primer
http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/grub4dos/ (Warning this link is slow due to adds!!!)
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB_Legacy
And more are available on my pearltrees page

As a side note if we wnat to try something other than syslinux or grub 2 perhaps we could try EFISTUB

[nic007]

Grub4dos and multi-booting, see my suggestions later on in that thread: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 2&start=30

[s243a]

Grub4dos and multi-booting, see my suggestions later on in that thread: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 2&start=30

Sounds like an interesting solution for newer systems.

I'm trying though to get an older computer to recognize a usb 3.0 flash drive (1.82 Tib NTFS). It will recognize it once puppy is loaded but won't recognize it from grub4dos.

Since I notice that the drive came with 101 MiB at the beginning of the partition unused. I wonder if this is enough space to create a Grub 2 boot partition. Gparted doesn't seem to tell me what kind of partition system the drive is using (i.e. GPT vs MBR). I wonder if this could be the issue. Perhaps I can replace the partition table with an MBR style. I'm not sure if this will effect any of the data on the disk.

Looking around since there is not Grub 2 pet, I see a tool that looks like a simple way to install Grub 2:
https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/plpbt.bin.html

I wonder if anyone here has tried this too and if it has a good reputation.

I also see another tool that lets you use grub4dos style menus with Grub 2 but this tools hasn't been updated since 2013
http://reboot.pro/topic/12474-burg-grub ... g-support/

Perhaps though this isn't that useful since there are tools to convert menu.lst files to men.cfg file. I recall seeing how to do this on archwiki.

[nic007]

My set up is on HD on a relatively old laptop: Windows installed on first partition, second partition for data and third partition for about six puppys. First two partitions ntfs and puppy partition ext3 (which I later changed to fat32 because I like access all my files from all OSes). It seems as if the partitioning/formatting of your flashdrive is causing the issues. I would reformat the flashdrive and partition the flashdrive. You are aware that you need to make the flashdrive bootable if you want to boot from it?

[Sailor Enceladus]

and cannot read NTFS file system labels.

What is this labels thing you speak of? grub4dos always worked for me with ntfs.

The original site went offline recently for some reason but can still be found with archive.org, slower sometimes though:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160410143128/http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/Grub4dos.htm

[s243a]

My set up is on HD on a relatively old laptop: Windows installed on first partition, second partition for data and third partition for about six puppys. First two partitions ntfs and puppy partition ext3 (which I later changed to fat32 because I like access all my files from all OSes). It seems as if the partitioning/formatting of your flashdrive is causing the issues. I would reformat the flashdrive and partition the flashdrive. You are aware that you need to make the flashdrive bootable if you want to boot from it?

I wanted to put the bootloader on a floppy drive and then boot from the floppy drive to the usb external hard drive. So I don't want to set the boot flag on the USB drive. It so happens that two of the computers I have have floppy drives so I could configure my menus on the floppy drive.

I want to be able to hide menu items if the USB isn't present and I want to refer to the USB partitions either by label or uuid. It seems to me that switching out floppy drives is a quick and easy way to change boot menus. Faster than pluggin in USB drives albeit a slower boot speed.

[s243a]

and cannot read NTFS file system labels.

What is this labels thing you speak of? grub4dos always worked for me with ntfs.

The original site went offline recently for some reason but can still be found with archive.org, slower sometimes though:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160410143128/http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/Grub4dos.htm

<

I need either labels or uuid_s so that I can refer to the drive without having to worry about boot order. There is a find command in grub4dos that I could use if neither of these will work with my ntfs partition. However, that means I have to use a different directory structure for each flash drive and it will also be slower. Also grub4dos can't even see my drive as is. Perhaps it will after reformatting as nic007 suggests. However, I don't want to delete the data on the drive and I don't have another large flash drive to move the files to at the moment.

[nic007]

I'm not sure what you want to achieve so it's difficult to give advice - Do you want a multi-boot system to boot a few puppys of your choice from a floppy drive (grub and menu.lst installed to floppy drive). The puppys are going to be installed to an external USB drive...if so what is the current structure of the USB drive? There will be no other operating systems besides the puppys?

[Les Kerf]

...

I wanted to put the bootloader on a floppy drive and then boot from the floppy drive to the usb external hard drive...

You may want to give the PloP Bootloader a try. I have had good success booting from floppy to USB with PloP.

https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/index.html

[LazY Puppy]

Yes, PloP Bootloader is great.

I'd used it for some years to boot Puppy from usb flash drive at my girlfriend's old machine, that couldn't boot from usb. Just burnt a CD for plop booting, choosing usb in plop and there it boots.

The machine no longer exists, though the CD still does!

[Galbi]

I always put Plop as one item of the grub4dos menu, so no need of floppy or CD.

Yes, it's a bootloader calling another bootloader, (nested bootloaders), but works.

Saludos.

[LazY Puppy]

I always put Plop as one item of the grub4dos menu, so no need of floppy or CD.

Yes, it's a bootloader calling another bootloader, (nested bootloaders), but works.

Saludos.

I can imagine it's benefits, though could you describe it, so others could read?

[Galbi]

I can imagine it's benefits, though could you describe it, so others could read?

Here you are Herr RSH:
https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/plpb ... ml#rungrub

[Les Kerf]

I can imagine it's benefits, though could you describe it, so others could read?

Here you are Herr RSH:
https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/plpb ... ml#rungrub

Interesting.

I have always used it the other way, booting from a floppy and then calling Grub4Dos which I have installed on the Partition Boot Sector (PBS)

[LazY Puppy]

I can imagine it's benefits, though could you describe it, so others could read?

Here you are Herr RSH:
https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/plpb ... ml#rungrub

Thanks.

[s243a]

...

I wanted to put the bootloader on a floppy drive and then boot from the floppy drive to the usb external hard drive...

You may want to give the PloP Bootloader a try. I have had good success booting from floppy to USB with PloP.

https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/index.html

I must of installed the wrong bootimage to the floppy because the floppy that I created only had the option of installing the bootloader to a hard drive and did not give me boot options.

Anyway, from the floppy I installed the bootloader to the hard drive and re-booted. The user interface seemed dos-like outdate an I accidental deleted the partition table from one of my drives while using it.

I was able to recover the deleted partition table using test disk:
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/linu ... overy.html
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download

I noticed that there are two verions of the plop bootloader. I tried this one:
https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/index.html

but there is also plopkexec:
https://www.plop.at/en/plopkexec/index.html

I will experiment with plop again but in the documentation of plopkexec it says that it was only the 2011 version that will fit on a floppy. Given this, I think that I will try to learn more about syslinux first and them come back to plop. For the version of plop that I tried it might be a useful tool to call from grub in the advent that you don't have a menu item configured for some os that you want to boot but besides that I think I prefer grub4dos.

As a side note it was able to see the usbdrive that grub4does couldn't but I couldn't figure out how to boot the drive from plop since I didn't see how to put into it puppy-like boot paramaters. I will experiment more with it in the future though.

[Sailor Enceladus]

The laptops I prefer to buy are Pentium M business models so grub4dos is new in comparison. Runs 7.x Puppies well tho.

[Les Kerf]

[quote="s243a"] ...

I must of installed the wrong bootimage to the floppy because the floppy that I created only had the option of installing the bootloader to a hard drive and did not give me boot options... [quote]

You probably used dd if=plpbtin.img of=/dev/fd0 which requires installing to the bootsector

What you need is dd if=plpbt.img of=/dev/fd0 which does NOT require installing to the bootsector.

[Pelo]

GRUB4DOS Outdated ? perhaps that is true. But it remains a fantastic, simple, powerfuf tool for boot my Puppies. Some defaults , but so many qualties.
Default : puppy starts without giving choices PF2 and PF3
YOU TUBE Grub4Dos take a glance !

[Robert123]

Grub4dos with .pets by Shinobar work well for me so don't care how old they are. In fact I love grub4dos easy to use.