Grub4dos - Chit-chat

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enrique · #1 Post by **enrique** » Fri 12 Jun 2020, 23:51

Grub4dos - Chit-chat

This is NOT for:
*ask for for general installation help, Please search the forum for that. Or Open a new thread on Help.

This is a place to exchange Info Ideas or question you may have on how grub4dos becomes Puppy default, the basic Inner works.
For example, Why it is been said you can not used it on GPT?

Why I started this?
Well I try to be funny in http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 31#1060631

And at the end I found my self been embarrass as I seem wrong for current versions but I may be correct if we used old versions!

.

enrique · #2 Post by **enrique** » Sat 13 Jun 2020, 00:16

So I will start:

Why it is been said you can not used grub4dos on GPT?

I guess Puppy Woofce adopted latest shinobar's Grub4DosConfig

And it seems to be grub4dos-0.4.4.v1.9.4.pet (2018-09-18).

But I can read at shinobar's site What is Grub4Dos?

shinobar wrote:(Add for v1.6)
Supporting ext4 file system was partially as for the grub4dosconfig-0.4.4.v1.5.x. It required the help of grub legacy as for the etx4. grub4dosconfig-0.4.4.v1.6 has now ext4 full support thanks to the 'Wee' for the MBR.

I am no expert but after browsing the web for days I think I can identify 'Wee' as the cause for the none compatibility with GPT.

I am under the impression that the OLD grub4dos 1rst stage should fit under the 446 bytes of 1rst sector. And if I am wrong I am also under the impression that there are other 1rst stages that can be hack to boot load grub4dos last stage.

Please notice what I am saying. I am under the impression that newer grldr can read GPT partitions. I did not say it is UEFI safe. And if we remove 'Wee' then we may encounter issues with ext4. But as grldr will be on GPT fat32 ESP this should not be of an issue.

I guess this is good starting point to gain back a few points with Masters rcrsn51 & rockedge

Note: This is untested, but I think it has good chance to work.

pcplague2 · #3 Post by **pcplague2** » Sat 13 Jun 2020, 15:09

WEE is a small cut-down boot manager which is based on grub4dos.
https://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/wee

Hope it helps

That's what I found.

Using puppy for a month now

enrique · #4 Post by **enrique** » Sat 13 Jun 2020, 17:57

I was expecting a lot of people jumping in to correct me. Why because I have not test what I say and I can still very wrong. But from my readings it a 90% possibility that grub4dos grldr can be used on GPT. Well I think we can always make GPT's default grub2 to chainload to grub4dos.

pcplague2 thanks for your posting and the link. Yes that a nice place to start reading. Lots of good reading on rmprepusb.com

On 05 Nov 2010, piratesmack suggested shinobar to start using wee with his Grub4DosConfig pet.

As results 8 Nov 2010 shinobar adopted and introduce it on grub4dos-0.4.4.v1.6.0.pet

I guess I will have to start test it my self. We should adopt a GPT partition schema of the many here. Who can suggest the best one. I recall a thread of Mike Walsh I will start searching.

enrique · #5 Post by **enrique** » Sun 14 Jun 2020, 12:38

People
I got my qemu setup to make it simple.
I got my 1rst Disk.img with Dos Partition Table with 1 NTFS+ 1 swap.

Now I am ready to build a hybrid disk. I see in the past more than 4 post on hybrids here and after hours of search I could not find one. So I NEED HELP. See I never play before with GPT on this forum.

So Question:
***Please suggest a thread where discuss a USB Frugal Install that can boot both in UEFI or BIOS.

or

*** Tell me the best Puppy program that can build USB to boot in both UEFI or BIOS.

Then we will follow instruction, Test as is.
And last we can see how we can make it function with grub4dos.

Note : I do not have anything with value jet. But if anyone is interested I can upload what I have, an old quemu build statically ( this come from Puppyquemu ) and the regular MBR/DOS image running puppy_cli.iso witch is a Midnight Commander running in a just 9MB Puppy 4.12 but server only ( No Xor).

bigpup · #6 Post by **bigpup** » Sun 14 Jun 2020, 14:26

So Question:
***Please suggest a thread where discuss a USB Frugal Install that can boot both in UEFI or BIOS.
or
*** Tell me the best Puppy program that can build USB to boot in both UEFI or BIOS

.
Use Frugalpup Installer
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=114340

Setup the USB with two partitions.
First one a small 300MB, fat32 formatted, flagged boot.
Rest of drive a ext formatted partition.
Frugalpup Installer installs the frugal install to the 2nd partition.
The boot loader is installed to the first partition.

The boot option in Frugalpup Installer can install a UEFI bootloader or a kegacy bios bootloader or both.
You decide.
If you install both it should be able to boot on any type bios.

For a computer with UEFI and secure boot enabled.
The first time you boot it will give procedure to install the Puppy security key.

Running Frugalpup Installer
Puppy button is used to do the install
Boot button installs the boot loader.

enrique · #7 Post by **enrique** » Sun 14 Jun 2020, 17:39

bigpup wrote:...The boot option in Frugalpup Installer can install a UEFI bootloader or a kegacy bios bootloader or both.
You decide.
If you install both it should be able to boot on any type bios....

"Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope." - Princess Leia Organa

Yes I am looking for any GPT partition schema that can be used to (Hybrid) boot grub/grub2 or Legacy MBR.

Regards UEFI, well I will accept original schema may work UEFI.

Now what we try to probe is that grub4dos grldr and it menu.lst can execute and select files on GPT Partitions. We are NOT saying it will be UEFI Safe.

install the Puppy security key
This is the second time I read this comments. Are you guys saying you got pass Verizon/Microsoft Authenticated Schema? Or you just build your own with OpenSSL?

In any case it is nice to see that Puppy people are moving and not just copying some one else. In general I hope to see Class Action Court decision against them base on the fact that Verizon/Microsoft Authenticated Schema is a Monopoly.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
I guess I did not explain correctly.

I was looking for a Schema for Partitions. I mean you did explain one. But from what I see Puppy frugal installer. is used AFTER I have a partition schema DONE.

What I was looking is for a GPT Partition Layout. I was under the impression this was a Clear Situation. I seen post I just can find them. Then this makes me wonder? How a newbee manage to create it.

To continue I will follow https://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/hybrid.html.
for now just to learn the basic of Hibrid.

bigpup · #8 Post by **bigpup** » Sun 14 Jun 2020, 22:55

Forget about Grub4dos if you want to boot on a UEFI computer with secure boot enabled.

In the UEFI computer bios setup.
If you disable secure boot or enable legacy boot or enable CSM.
Grub4dos boot loader will boot with no problem.
These settings make the UEFI bios act like a legacy bios.

The problem with Grub4dos is it needs a place to put the mbr it makes and is looking for msdos mbr setup partition table.
GPT partition tables do not use msdos mbr type setup.
UEFI can boot from a msdos or GPT partition table setup.

Frugalpup Installer uses Grub2 boot loader.
It works with UEFI and secure boot enabled.
Also works on a GPT drive.

A small first partition, formatted fat32, as the boot partition, is a requirement of UEFI.
Boot loader files go on it.

Getting the Puppy security key working in Frugalpup Installer is talked about in the last few pages of the Frugalpup Installer topic.

If you have a really old computer with one of the first UEFI bios. Who knows what that will work with.
UEFI was still being tweaked the first few years.
Disable secure boot or enable legacy boot should let it work like legacy bios.

enrique · #9 Post by **enrique** » Mon 15 Jun 2020, 00:14

bigpup

You are correct on almost all what you said. I know. I still miss understood. To ALL read 1rst Post.

My Chit-Chat is:
*NOT about how to boot Puppy.
*Nor I want to answer question on Help.
*Nor about anything on UEFI
*This may have no use in the future

I will stop I know you get the point. It just that I was corrected on a few issues. And if we go by Current ( Today ) knowledge of the users in the forum I was wrong. Meaning what users think is right or wrong today base on their ideas. But thing change, or in the past were different. If we move away of our conform zone, you can find that many of what been said well it is not totally true.

I am trying to prove that grub4dos the bootmanager grdlr can be use as a boot manage under GPT partition table. And I think if properly setup could allow most of your correct Installers on UEFI to be able to work as Hybrid. Managing when place under Bios/MBR. And not I did not invented. Is been like that since the time of WIN8. Hackers improved the code to try overwhelm UEFI. No one in Linux had look back as almost all western forums closed. You have to go to China.

Now my knowledge on the Devil artifact called grub2 is 0%. And I hope never to have to learn it. I am against all kind of manipulation.

I already posted what is the part that have conflict with GPT. NOT grub4dos but what Puppy added to it "wee".

Now I need to prove that grub4dos can boot.. Or I could suggest to move it to a none conflict zone.

I can give you more example on correctness; 512 sectors is the standard on HDD, but most drivers are 4K sectors native. So they claim we need to Aligned our partitions, To do so our gparted should be define also in 4K instead it uses 2048. So we still miss aligned.

Now I was corrected that gparted is not 2048 sectors. And I took the bait and say sorry. But in reality 2048 sectors = 1MiB

Anyway give me some time, I Hope today to post an advance.
enrique

enrique · #10 Post by **enrique** » Mon 15 Jun 2020, 04:43

OK People here a Puppy inside a GPT Schema.

To extract remove the las fake ".tar" from Attached gru4dos_gpt.tar.xz.tar so that it looks gru4dos_gpt.tar.xz Then untar using Uextract or whatever you like.

You end up with a folder called gru4dos_gpt. In it you will have all the necessary files to runt the image in virtual quemu. Files are:

Code: Select all

allinoneqemu_linux
1GB_GPT.img
puppy.sh

allinoneqemu_linux ==> Is the static 32 bit qemu. I got it from Puppyquemu.
puppy.sh ==> This is just to start quemu, just open a terminal and type ./puppy.sh

1GB_GPT.img ==> This Image contain a FULL HDD, This HDD have 3 GPT Partitions. as following:

Code: Select all

gdisk -l 1GB_GPT.img
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.3

Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Disk 1GB_GPT.img: 2097152 sectors, 1024.0 MiB
Sector size (logical): 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 277D33C9-1137-43E4-93E3-B2873962E01F
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 2097118
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 2014 sectors (1007.0 KiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1            2048          524287   255.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System
   2          524288         1572863   512.0 MiB   8300  Linux filesystem
   3         1572864         2097118   256.0 MiB   8200  Linux Swap

grldr and Puppy are inside partition #2.
This Puppy is my test Puppy without Xorg but with Midnight Commander. It size is only about 9MB. This Puppy come from puppy_cli.iso.

As you see files may be interesting but NONE of the files are of my Authority.

ALL are part of pUPnGO series. Very Impressive. ALL Thanks go to goingnuts

And quemu-puppy at http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/qemupuppy/

=========================

Now as you see the HDD imagfge I build 1GB_GPT.img holds grub4dos operating on GPT. And it should not conflict with GPT.

What I do not know is what will happen if any of you install grub2 on the 256MB EF00 EFI System partition.

I will expect that if you install Grub2 for UEFI All will be fine.
But If you install Grub2 for Bios, then the code in MBR will be overwritten by grub2 and point then to grub2 bootmanager. Then you will have to create the menu for Puppy Cli. This is the menu in grub4dos

Code: Select all

title pUPnGO (sda1/pUPnGO)
  find --set-root uuid () 6326c979-cb7d-4610-8f3b-45b9c23e0191
  kernel /pUPnGO/vmlinuz initrd=initrd.gz pdev1=sda2 psubdir=pUPnGO pfix=fsck pmedia=atahd 
  initrd /pUPnGO/initrd.gz

Forum did not let me upload. Asking me to select a mode!!! No Idea what it means so I uploaded to

Code: Select all

https://mega.nz/file/DHZyQCCD#55izw17XFmKIHqdIAW5e9xryBK42kWx1HdcJDWru_F4

gru4dos_gpt.tar.xz.tar is only 10.7 MB

Magic for a 1 GB HDD.....

enjoy
enrique

enrique · #11 Post by **enrique** » Mon 15 Jun 2020, 18:59

Wao I was expecting to cause Commotion. And my only audience has been pcplague2 & bigpup.

Now just a note on working with disk images.

To prove that grub4dos work on GPT disk, I have to build a Full HDD Disk Image. But if you are a newbee bee careful. Working with disk images has its risk. This is the reason I provided qemu emulator. You play with it virtually and, no harm is done,

Now there will be those that will love to test this in a real USB. I done it. Simple way to do is use dd. If you are a newbee beware dd has been called disk distroyer.

1) MOST important be carefull to REALY know what disk is what. Use blkid. lsblk or fdisk -l or dmesg to help you. You play with wrong disk and you lose that data.

2) Weird behaviors!! This is where I too get confuse.
I build a relative small image of 1 Giga Byte. (10MB compressed). But chances are you do not have a 1 GB USB. So you will try to copy that to your 4GB USB. So you do:

You hook your 4GB and discover it is dev/sdc ( becarefull use your real one)

Code: Select all

dd if=1GB_GPT.img of=/dev/sdc bs=100M status=progressc

Now you have a REAL 4GB USB Memory that thinks it is a 1GB USB Memory!!!!!

To repair this we do

Code: Select all

sgdisk -e /dev/sdc

Now lest say something went wrong!!

So you use gparted /dev/sdc and it detects the mistake and ask you if you want to repair. 99% of the time all goes well and you end with what you want. But there is 1% where the weird attack shows. And depending where you hook that memory, it is how it behaves!!!. Yes you end up with a USB drive that show wrong size or not work at all.

Most of the time I can go to Win7 and use MiniTool Partition Wizard 10 or 9 and this program allows you to delete the correct Partitions and Partition table and resurrect by creating another new one. This is the only method I have found. If you know of a method in Linux I love to here about it.

So if you are a newbie do not play with using dd to write over MBR. If you get in trouble do not blame me. This has nothing to do with my image but the concepts of manually writing a partition table that reflex the wrong disk size. So if you are a newbie use only the virtual emulator.

Now I expect to see my a discussion if grub4dos can or not be compatible with GPT. After that I can post how I build it. Yes the tools and commands. You will laugh at it as there is no magic to it.

UPSSS! I forgot main topic,
If you build your USB with my image you will have to ubdate menu.lst.

Lets say you have 2 disk installed on PC to grub you have (hd0) (hd1) and your USB is (hd2). But to Puppy usb will be them sdc. So you need to modify your append from sda2 to sdc2, Like this

Code: Select all

title pUPnGO (sda1/pUPnGO)
  find --set-root uuid () 6326c979-cb7d-4610-8f3b-45b9c23e0191
  kernel /pUPnGO/vmlinuz initrd=initrd.gz pdev1=sdc2 psubdir=pUPnGO pfix=fsck pmedia=atahd 
  initrd /pUPnGO/initrd.gz

I been very detail to prevent people to tell me it does not work.
enrique

Mike Walsh · #12 Post by **Mike Walsh** » Tue 16 Jun 2020, 14:12

@ enrique:-

For Gawd's sake, put me out of my misery, will ya? What, exactly, are you trying to prove here? And will it in fact have any practical application for anyone other than yourself..?

'Cos you have completely "lost" me, I tell you..!

Mike.

bigpup · #13 Post by **bigpup** » Tue 16 Jun 2020, 16:07

To me, the real question is using Grub4dos to boot a 2TB plus drive, that most likely will have to be, GPT partition table setup.

enrique · #14 Post by **enrique** » Tue 16 Jun 2020, 19:50

Hoopsss! I took a direction I was not expected. I was truly expecting to have a nice Chit-Chat and post why not why yes.

Ok, Explanation?
Quick Answer is that this is an extra episode of Discovery Channel "MythBusters".

Situation:
Many masters and user keep saying "Grub4dos is not compatible with GPT". And many will even be more explicit as to say ""Grub4dos 1rst Stage takes MBR + the 1rst 34 sectors that are required by GPT".

Objective:
In this week alone I was wrongly corrected in more than once. So here I am proving those corrections where wrong. As in fact Grub4dos do work very nicely in GPT. Well I had an idea, but just tested my self a few days ago.

Expectation & disappointment:
I was expecting that those that think that way will be defending at least their point. Instead everyone ignore the issue and It seems to me now that most has taken a smart position: "Ohhh we all know that" "What is new?".

A more mature way will be, "I was wrong and I see now you are correct". Now that I say that, way I do not remember a single post in this forum that a user say "I am sorry". Interesting. Well the exception is myself of curse...

Well, I am glad at least we all now are on the same page: Grub4dos manager can be use on GPT disks.

I will stop this story as it goes no where. But if any want more info just ask.

Notes:
"any practical application"
*We can have our disk formatted as GPT and still using grub4dos and Puppies as we been doing for NONE UEFI Systems.
* Untested by my. But You could have your UEFI Safe USB. And Install grub4dos in the Hybrid Legacy MBR. So when booting on UEFI you get your New Grub2 Menu, But when booting on Legacy you have then the familiar Grub4dos manager.
*As for WHO may use this. Well a user like me! My machine is Legacy so I do not need the a UEFI installation even when it will work on my machine. Why because many of us do not like Grub2 Menus. We love Grub4dos. But now I and build compatible UEFI USB. But Still using my good friendly Grub4dos boot manager on my PC. Do you had such a capability before?

"2TB", Please do not try to confuse people this has nothing to do with legacy Grub,Grub4dos or new Grub2. HDD size disk had cause problems since IBM PC era. From 640K, 1.44MB to 4/8GB. More recently 32/64 GB on Flash memories. Now 2TB.
GPT is not a new thing. But industry did not adopted for years. It was force, when new greater than 2TB HDD show up well we then where force to move on.
Yes MSDOS Partition Tables can NOT handle > 2TB.
But to you SURPRISE and mine...
Before my suggestion NO Puppy user could install a workable Grub4dos on HDD > 2TB.
NOW with this suggestion ALL Puppians can benefit and install Grub4dos on ANY Size HDD on the market today. Yet another "practical application"......

This was not supposed to sound like a Teaching Lesson, it was supposed to be a nice Chit-Chat

Note that different that many here, I do admit I can be wrong as all is new and untested territory.
enrique

Moose On The Loose · Thu 18 Jun 2020, 14:23

So does this all mean that with Grub4Dos, I could have an array of 10 of these:
https://youtu.be/IlnskJj6LRs
and boot puppy 421 from it?

BTW: I just tried the thing of putting puppy in a subdirectory on an SD card and getting Grub4Dos to configure it. I am looking at this as a way to have multiple puppies on the same device without having to break it into multiple partitions.

jafadmin · #16 Post by **jafadmin** » Thu 18 Jun 2020, 16:46

Moose On The Loose wrote:BTW: I just tried the thing of putting puppy in a subdirectory on an SD card and getting Grub4Dos to configure it. I am looking at this as a way to have multiple puppies on the same device without having to break it into multiple partitions.

That is my usual method for thumbs w/Grub4Dos.
I usually format a thumb to ext2 and mark as boot, then run Grub4Dos on it BEFORE I put anything on it. It creates a menu.lst with no puppies to boot.

Then I put several puppy versions on it in their individual directories then manually fill out the menu.lst. I have thumb drives with as many as 20 different puppies on them, all on one partition.

Entries look like this:

Code: Select all

title 571+
  uuid [UUID of thumb drive partition goes here]
  kernel /571+/vmlinuz   psubdir=571+ pmedia=usbflash pfix=fsck
  initrd /571+/initrd.gz

title 571 RAM
  uuid [UUID of thumb drive partition goes here]
  kernel /571+/vmlinuz   psubdir=571+ pmedia=usbflash pfix=ram
  initrd /571+/initrd.gz

title BionicPup64
  uuid [UUID of thumb drive partition goes here]
  kernel /BionicPup64/vmlinuz   psubdir=BionicPup64 pmedia=usbflash pfix=fsck
  initrd /BionicPup64/initrd.gz

bigpup · #17 Post by **bigpup** » Thu 18 Jun 2020, 19:39

I do this also.
But I install the frugal installed Puppy versions, each in their own directories.
Run Grub4dos Config.
Select to install to this drive.
Select to search only in this specific drive.

Grub4dos Config is very good at making a menu entry for all it finds on the drive.

Add a new frugal install.
Rerun Grub4dos Config to update the boot menu.

The advanced menu will mostly have entries for the Puppy version Grub4dos Config was run in.
Ram only no save, nox, etc.....
The main menu will all be normal boot entries.

jafadmin · #18 Post by **jafadmin** » Sat 20 Jun 2020, 02:38

As my final Pro Tip™, I usually just open the ISO file of the desired puppy OS and copy the needed puppy files into the aforementioned folders, rather than running a install wizard. Typically the ".sfs" files, the "initrd.gz" file, and the "vmlinuz" file.

Why do that? Because I can quickly install lots of puppy OS's without having to boot each one.

Moose On The Loose · Sun 21 Jun 2020, 14:20

jafadmin wrote:As my final Pro Tip™, I usually just open the ISO file of the desired puppy OS and copy the needed puppy files into the aforementioned folders, rather than running a install wizard. Typically the ".sfs" files, the "initrd.gz" file, and the "vmlinuz" file.

Why do that? Because I can quickly install lots of puppy OS's without having to boot each one.

That is the method I used. Sadly Precise and Bionic both need CPU features my EEEPC's CPU simply doesn't have. Both 421 and my own modified 528 work fine when I do it (after I fixed a bug I added) I think I may try to fine some more non PAE kernels.

jafadmin · #20 Post by **jafadmin** » Sun 21 Jun 2020, 19:09

Moose On The Loose wrote:
jafadmin wrote:As my final Pro Tip™, I usually just open the ISO file of the desired puppy OS and copy the needed puppy files into the aforementioned folders, rather than running a install wizard. Typically the ".sfs" files, the "initrd.gz" file, and the "vmlinuz" file.

Why do that? Because I can quickly install lots of puppy OS's without having to boot each one.
That is the method I used. Sadly Precise and Bionic both need CPU features my EEEPC's CPU simply doesn't have. Both 421 and my own modified 528 work fine when I do it (after I fixed a bug I added) I think I may try to fine some more non PAE kernels.

@MOTL I run BionicPup32 on older hardware by adding the "forcepae" on the "kernel" line. Works like a charm ..

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Grub4dos - Chit-chat

Grub4dos - Chit-chat

Why it is been said you can not used grub4dos on GPT?