UEFI/Grub USB boot disk image - Boot-o-Rama

[Jafadmin]

I have made a compressed 8gb usb bootdisk image. It will boot on either Legacy BIOS or UEFI. It contains NO operating systems. It just boots to a grub menu.

Your mission, should you decide to accept, is to extract the boot image onto an 8gb USB stick and test if it boots to a grub menu. If it does, create Puppy directories on partition 2, make entries for the puppies in /boot/grub/grub.cfg on partition2, and have a dang blast driving puppy instead of trying to figure out how to get it started. Let's dig in ..

1) Download the 12meg "uefi-grub_boot_8gb.img.gz" from Ufile.io: https://ufile.io/eseoklyf .. OR: download the 6meg "uefi-grub_boot_2gb.img.gz" version and resize partition2 https://ufile.io/fpyoei7m
2) Extract the compressed disk image to a USB stick by running the following command from the folder that has the gz image. It will overwrite the USB stick

Code: Select all

gzip -d -c uefi-grub_boot_8gb.img.gz | dd bs=512 of=/dev/sdX

(Where sdX is the drive descriptor of the USB stick).

3) Add Puppy OS's (one OS to a directory) by dropping the .sfs files, vmlinuz, and initrd.gz files from their ISO into their respective directories on partition 2.
4) Edit partition2's '/boot/grub/grub.cfg' and mimic the entries you see there, for each of your desired OS's.
5) Get out there and boot some doggone machines!

[Jafadmin]

The image extracts 7.4 gb onto an 8gb stick (not all 8gb sticks are really 8gb ). You can extract it onto a larger stick, of course, then just resize partition2 with Gparted to fill the stick.

[williwaw]

Step 2 requires patience. 37+ minutes, but so far it looks good. (added status=progress arguement to create feedback with dd.)

0 /mnt/sda3 # gzip -d -c uefi-grub_boot_8gb.img.gz | dd bs=512 of=/dev/sdc status=progress
7737053696 bytes (7.7 GB, 7.2 GiB) copied, 2232 s, 3.5 MB/s
15114240+0 records in
15114240+0 records out
7738490880 bytes (7.7 GB, 7.2 GiB) copied, 2235.61 s, 3.5 MB/s
0 /mnt/sda3 #

[GMBudwrench]

I used a windows image program to flash to my 16gb drive. Went off without a hitch. It booted up to the grub screen, as you posted. Now if I had some pointers on how/where to drop my files, I’d be happy. My first couple of tries didn’t work. I’m a nooby with these grub configurations. I had a working instance years ago but I don’t remember how I did it. So any help would be appreciated. Thx

Oh, Fossapup64-9.5 is my setup atm

[Jafadmin]

Step 2 requires patience. 37+ minutes, but so far it looks good. (added status=progress arguement to create feedback with dd.)

0 /mnt/sda3 # gzip -d -c uefi-grub_boot_8gb.img.gz | dd bs=512 of=/dev/sdc status=progress
7737053696 bytes (7.7 GB, 7.2 GiB) copied, 2232 s, 3.5 MB/s
15114240+0 records in
15114240+0 records out
7738490880 bytes (7.7 GB, 7.2 GiB) copied, 2235.61 s, 3.5 MB/s
0 /mnt/sda3 #

Yep. 3.5 MB/s is pretty slow. As with everything, speed is hardware dependent. My i5 machine averages 6 MB/s to USB 2.

In retrospect I guess I could have made it as a 2gb disk image and the user could resize it with gparted after it is created

Maybe I will later .. ... Ok, done! See the first post!

Thank you @williwaw

[Jafadmin]

I used a windows image program to flash to my 16gb drive. Went off without a hitch. It booted up to the grub screen, as you posted. Now if I had some pointers on how/where to drop my files, I’d be happy. My first couple of tries didn’t work. I’m a nooby with these grub configurations. I had a working instance years ago but I don’t remember how I did it. So any help would be appreciated. Thx

Oh, Fossapup64-9.5 is my setup atm

I have no idea what your first sentence means. What windows program did you use to flash what to your drive?

[williwaw]

Yep. 3.5 MB/s is pretty slow. As with everything, speed is hardware dependent. My i5 machine averages 6 MB/s to USB 2.

In retrospect I guess I could have made it as a 2gb disk image and the user could resize it with gparted after it is created :geek:

Maybe I will later .. :ugeek: ... Ok, done! See the first post!

Thank you @williwaw

The slow write speed in this case is most likely attributable to the cheapo thumb drive I used. It's going in the trash and I am downloading Fatdog to install on a new drive, on which I will also try out your
uefi-grub_boot_2gb.img.gz.

Is your application intended for use by the "first time" linux user? Someone with no linux tools available?

[GMBudwrench]

I used this: https://www.alexpage.de/usb-image-tool/, posted by BK as another means of writing it to a flash drive. It works, I can boot to the grub screen, I need instructions on how to configure puppy to boot. I see the selection screen for fossa init, fossa iso and Linux mint. Where do I copy the files and configure the grub file to find them?

[Jafadmin]

Yep. 3.5 MB/s is pretty slow. As with everything, speed is hardware dependent. My i5 machine averages 6 MB/s to USB 2.

In retrospect I guess I could have made it as a 2gb disk image and the user could resize it with gparted after it is created

Maybe I will later .. ... Ok, done! See the first post!

Thank you @williwaw

The slow write speed in this case is most likely attributable to the cheapo thumb drive I used. It's going in the trash and I am downloading Fatdog to install on a new drive, on which I will also try out your
uefi-grub_boot_2gb.img.gz.

Is your application intended for use by the "first time" linux user? Someone with no linux tools available?

Well, it relies on 'gzip' & 'dd', so you can't run it from windows. But if they boot a puppy cd or iso, they could do it by following the directions.

[Jafadmin]

I used this: https://www.alexpage.de/usb-image-tool/, posted by BK as another means of writing it to a flash drive. It works, I can boot to the grub screen, I need instructions on how to configure puppy to boot. I see the selection screen for fossa init, fossa iso and Linux mint. Where do I copy the files and configure the grub file to find them?

The disk has 2 partitions. Partition1 is the 'front' fat32 partition, and partition 2 is 'back' ext2 partition. Make a directory on partition2 for the puppy you wish to boot, then edit the '/boot/grub/grub.cfg' and copy+paste the methods shown to boot your puppy. You will need a linux version to see and edit things on partition2.

This boot disk image I posted is NOT intended as task that can be undertaken from Windows. It is intended for linux users who wish to quickly make a Legacy BIOS/UEFI boot USB stick.

[williwaw]

1. uefi-grub_boot_2gb.img.gz written to new stick at 5.6 MB/sec.

Code: Select all

gzip -d -c uefi-grub_boot_2gb.img.gz | dd bs=512 of=/dev/sdc status=progress

2. used Gparted to resize sdc2

3. created a new directory "fatdog" on sdc2 and mounted (opened) my iso and copied over the initrd and vmlimz to it. I found a stanza in the fatdog's iso grub.cfg to add to /boot/grub/grub.cfg (I needed to edit it as shown to reflect the new location of the copied initrd and vmlinz into the fatdog directory.)

It boots just fine.

Screenshot.png (169.02 KiB) Viewed 871 times

[GMBudwrench]

Got it to work. I used windows to only write the image to my flashdrive. That’s it. I was looking at your code in the grub files with fossapup. I have a wonky flashdrive and have had issues trying to write EasyOs to it using dd. I used the windows program because that’s what works for me. Anyway, good work on this. Will try it out more this weekend when I have time.

[festus]

@ Jafadmin

Thanks for sharing this much needed boot image, that works just as you explained.

[Jafadmin]

Thanks all you guys, very much, for the testing and feedback. You rock!

[wiak]

Works for me. I like this way of doing it - very straightforward.

[Grey]

Interesting. But I find it easier to install grub2 from PPM. Insert a flash drive or disk. And then give two commands in terminal:

Code: Select all

mount /dev/sdXY /mnt
grub-install --boot-directory=/mnt/boot /dev/sdX

And then copy vmlinuz, initrd, all sfs. You can cram a bunch of distros.

[Jafadmin]

Interesting. But I find it easier to install grub2 from PPM. Insert a flash drive or disk. And then give two commands in terminal:

Code: Select all

mount /dev/sdXY /mnt
grub-install --boot-directory=/mnt/boot /dev/sdX

And then copy vmlinuz, initrd, all sfs. You can cram a bunch of distros.

True, but then it won't boot on uefi boxes. The whole point of the images I made is that they will boot on both UEFI machines and Legacy BIOS machines.