Limine Installer PET version 1.3

[BarryK]

Here is the blog announcement, with photos:

https://bkhome.org/news/202207/limine-i ... on-10.html

I would like to thank the guys who helped with debugging Limine Installer, in particular Alfons, who very patiently tested and retested on old BIOS computers.

And of course mintsuki, the lead Limine developer, who very quickly responded to all the issues reported.

Limine is a bootloader, more than that really; a boot manager. It works on both BIOS and UEFI computers, 32-bit or 64-bit. There is an intro at the project page:

https://github.com/limine-bootloader/li ... 3.0-branch

One thing about Limine that sets it apart from GRUB2 is the extreme simplicity. Yet, I cannot identify anything that GRUB2 does that Limine doesn't. Nothing that matters to me, anyway.

Limine includes two binary executables, 'limine-deploy' and 'limine-version', and I have compiled 32-bit and 64-bit binaries and created PETs, see attached.

UPDATE: Limine is now version 3.13, PETs are here:

viewtopic.php?p=62914#p62914

Limine Installer is in the next post...

[BarryK]

The Limine Installer is bash shell scripts, a GUI that will discover all installed OSs and install Limine, with a menu to select an OS at bootup. Version 1.0 is attached.

The dependencies are:
limine 3.12.1 or later
lsblk utility from util-linux package
gtkdialog
parted
dmidecode
efibootmgr (only required for UEFI computers)

EasyOS 4.2.7 has all of those. It also has Limine Installer, but an earlier somewhat broken version.

If you install all of the above, you should be good to go running any Linux OS.

If running one of the pups, you probably don't want to install util-linux, as it will overwrite busybox utilities, which might have unforseen effects. Instead, download the util-linux package and get lsblk out of it.

Note, efibootmgr has at least one dependency, efivar.

Here is the Limine boot menu, after I had installed on an old BIOS laptop:

li-v1.0-5.jpg (28.2 KiB) Viewed 4712 times

...it can be jazzed-up with different font, background image.

UPDATE: Limine Installer now version 1.3, PET attached:

[BarryK]

I should mention one possible problem.
If install to a UEFI computer that already has a Linux distribution such as Debian or Ubuntu installed, with Grub2 bootloader, there may be a problem getting Limine to appear in the UEFI-Setup menu.

Limine Installer uses 'efibootmgr' to create a new entry for Limine, and place it as the default at bootup.

However, testing on one of my computers, I experienced somehow Debian was reinserting itself as the default.
I do not know how this can happen. Had to mess around with 'efibootmgr' and deleted some UEFI menu entries, then reinstalled the Limine entry, and then Limine worked.

I posted about this problem a few days ago:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic. ... 970#p61970

You can see the code that runs 'efibootmgr' in /usr/local/limine-installer/limine-installer

So far, this is the only issue. It could be that the UEFI-firmware in that old computer is buggy.

[BarryK]

Alfons sent me an email, he has tested the "--undeploy" feature, and it worked. He is testing on a BIOS-firmware computer, so Limine gets installed to the MBR:

Code: Select all

Initial situation
bootloader is grub2

Change Bootloader to limine
# limine-deploy /dev/sda --undeploy-data-file=bootloader-grub2
Physical block size of 512 bytes.
Deploying to MBR.
Stage 2 to be located at 0x200 and 0x3200.
Reminder: Remember to copy the limine.sys file in either
the root or /boot directories of one of the partitions
on the device, or boot will fail!
Limine deployed successfully!
Storing undeploy data to file: `bootloader-grub2`...
#
Restore Bootloader to grub2
# limine-deploy /dev/sda --undeploy --undeploy-data-file=bootloader-grub2
Physical block size of 512 bytes.
Loading undeploy data from file: `bootloader-grub2`...
Undeploy data restored successfully. Limine undeployed!
#

That's one thing I left out of the instructions in the GUI; the undeploy requires that "--undeploy-data-file" parameter also.

[BarryK]

I posted about Limine in this thread:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic. ... 632#p62632

[BarryK]

Tested the Installer, version 1.1, on a UEFI computer:

https://bkhome.org/news/202207/testing- ... puter.html

[BarryK]

A new page on Limine started at easyos.org:

https://easyos.org/install/limine-bootloader.html

[BarryK]

Some more blog posts about Limine and Limine Installer:

"Install Limine to PC with mainline Linux distros"
https://bkhome.org/news/202207/install- ... stros.html

"Limine BIOS chainloading enhancements"
https://bkhome.org/news/202207/limine-b ... ments.html

"Limine Installer enhanced EFI chainload"
https://bkhome.org/news/202207/limine-i ... nload.html

Limine Installer 1.2 will be released soon.

[BarryK]

Limine is now version 3.13. PETs attached.

[josejp2424]

Limine is now version 3.13. PETs attached.

tested on devuanpup.
Notebook nexo. Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-4025U CPU @ 1.90GHz.

thank you @BarryK .

i add locale-es limine-installer

[BarryK]

@josejp2424,
Thanks for testing.

Does Windows start OK?

Strange those big gaps in the window. This is what it looks like for me, in English:

limine-installer-2ndwindow-en.png (38.73 KiB) Viewed 2798 times

Does anyone know why gtkdialog would have created those big gaps?

If you run it again, the gtkdialog file is /tmp/limine-installer/LI_ESP_DLG
-- would you kindly attached that here?
It might show why the gaps are getting created.

To attach it, you would have to append ".txt" or ".gz" to the filename.

[step]

Does anyone know why gtkdialog would have created those big gaps?

First thing that comes to my mind is resizing. Try to resize (make bigger) the English window, see where you get some gaps and if they look like josejp2424's.

[BarryK]

Does anyone know why gtkdialog would have created those big gaps?

First thing that comes to my mind is resizing. Try to resize (make bigger) the English window, see where you get some gaps and if they look like josejp2424's.

the gtkdialog code does not set window size. It is automatic, handled by gtkdialog. Here it is:

Code: Select all

<window title="LimineInstaller: ESP install" image-name="/usr/share/pixmaps/limine-installer.png" window_position="1">
 <vbox>
  <frame>
   <hbox>
    <text><label>Click button to see generated menu entries:</label></text>
    <button><label>VIEW</label><action>defaulttexteditor /tmp/limine-installer/generated-entries & </action></button>
   </hbox>
  </frame>
  <frame IMPORTANT>
 <text use-markup="true"><label>"Windows is installed on this computer. If Windows 10 or 11, you must disable fast-startup. If this is not done, Windows may become corrupted in a dual-boot setup.
Search online for <i>windows disable fast startup</i> to find out how to do it."</label></text>
</frame>
  <text><label>"  "</label></text>
  <text><label>"It seems that the computer has UEFI firmware. This requires that you install Limine into a ESP partition.
(An ESP partition has a vfat filesystem and the boot and esp flags are set)

Here are the ESP partitions:"</label></text>
  
<radiobutton>
 <label>nvme1n1p1</label>
 <variable>DEV_nvme1n1p1</variable>
</radiobutton>
<radiobutton>
 <label>sda2</label>
 <variable>DEV_sda2</variable>
</radiobutton>
  <text><label>"Choose which one you want to install Limine to.

Then, click the INSTALL button:
(Note: there will be one more window, a final sanity check, before completing the installation)"</label></text>
  <hbox>
   <button><label>INSTALL</label><action>exit:install</action></button>
   <button cancel></button>
  </hbox>
 </vbox>
</window>

One thought that occurs to me, is EasyOS may have a different gtkdialog. It is gtk2, and the C source code is different from the gtkdialog used in woof-CE built pups.

[step]

One thought that occurs to me, is EasyOS may have a different gtkdialog. It is gtk2, and the C source code is different from the gtkdialog used in woof-CE built pups.

Bingo about gtk version. I tested your code with two woof-CE builds (release 0.8.5). The gtk2 one looks like your screenshot. The gtk3 build looks like jose's.
update I also tested gtk2/gtk3 builds of version 0.8.4. Same result, actually the gtk3 build looks even worse.

[BarryK]

One thought that occurs to me, is EasyOS may have a different gtkdialog. It is gtk2, and the C source code is different from the gtkdialog used in woof-CE built pups.

Bingo about gtk version. I tested your code with two woof-CE builds (release 0.8.5). The gtk2 one looks like your screenshot. The gtk3 build looks like jose's.
update I also tested gtk2/gtk3 builds of version 0.8.4. Same result, actually the gtk3 build looks even worse.

That's bad!
The latest woof-CE built pups are fazing out gtk2.
I'm sticking with gtk2 apps indefinitely. Why dump what works?

[Tahrbaby]

Thanks for this Barry..

It has solved a major headache for me since buying a new UEFI computer that can't be changed to anything else in bios.
I had been using Refind on this particular machine which did get me out of trouble and at least running with some of my Linux OS's but Limine finds all my Pupps that are in several directories and boots them all now with ease,plus its easy to setup as I find it very similar to G4dos which was what I had been used to,an added bonus.

Regards

[josejp2424]

@josejp2424,
Thanks for testing.

Does Windows start OK?

Strange those big gaps in the window. This is what it looks like for me, in English:

limine-installer-2ndwindow-en.png

Does anyone know why gtkdialog would have created those big gaps?

If you run it again, the gtkdialog file is /tmp/limine-installer/LI_ESP_DLG
-- would you kindly attached that here?
It might show why the gaps are getting created.

To attach it, you would have to append ".txt" or ".gz" to the filename.

limine-installer looks bad on my puppylinux, because the latest woof-ce uses gtk3.
as for windows it starts fine.

How it looks in gtk2dialog

[BarryK]

Another Limine bug bites the dust:

https://github.com/limine-bootloader/limine/issues/185

Haven't verified it yet, but it does seem that Reynaldo's Fujitsu laptop has 32-bit UEFI, and mintsuki has committed some fixes.

[Ramachandra Iyer]

I have generated Limine cfg after booting from USB on nvme SSD HP Laptop. However, it fails to generate menu entry for easyos which was available one of partition and also for Porteous. !!

Another old compaq laptop manufactured during the year 2010-11, I have installed boot menu entry through Limine Installer. However, it is not generated menu entry for some frugal installation for like Fossapup etc. Some duplicate menu entry created for Arch Linux variants.

Anyway Limine Installer is seems simple, good and fast. Great work .

[BarryK]

Bumped to 1.3, however, maybe still have a problem, see here:

https://bkhome.org/news/202208/more-san ... aller.html

[Ramachandra Iyer]

I have tested in old laptop. sda1 partition having easyos. Still Limine not detected. Sometimes not detecting properly. However, manual entry is possible without much effort.

[Maybe]

Hi!

I ran into a problem while installing the Limine bootloader on a hard drive where two operating systems were installed: Slackware 15 and VanillaDpup64. To install Limine, I used Easy OSD unfeel 4.3.4.

After installing Limine offered me a menu with two OS to choose from.

Puppy runs perfectly. There is an interesting feature: the same installation of Puppy VanillaDPup64, if you download it using Grub4dos, then there is no "save session" icon on the desktop. If I download the same Puppy using Limine, then the "save session" icon appears on the desktop. Why is this happening?

When choosing Slackware in the Limine menu, the following error occurred on the monitor screen:

P20902-191654(1).jpg (69.82 KiB) Viewed 2380 times

From Dmitriy (Russia)

[BarryK]

That would mean partition number 2 on the drive you are booting on.

Maybe you should try one of the other URIs, using fslabel or uuid, as documented here:

https://github.com/limine-bootloader/li ... /CONFIG.md

fslabel is often a good one to use, as long as there isn't two partitions with the same label.

I have found using partition numbers to be tricky.

[williwaw]

recently I advised a forum member about using limine installer. things seemed to go well, but then not. Something about duplicate uuids which I did not quite understand how could of been an uresolvable problem. Perhaps my advice was incorrect and I should better understand limine installer?
viewtopic.php?p=76481#p76481

If I use dd or easy dd to write the same easy.img to two different disks,
should created partitions have identical uuids? and if so,
does the most recent limine installer default to using uuids in limine.cfg?

[April]

Hi Guys
I'm not a quitter so when I got xenial running from the live disk again and could track the Sydney to Hobart , I went back and d/l a pristine copy and dd'd it to a USB and had another look at whats happening.

I had a copy of Easyos 4.5.3 running on the hard drive on an Acer laptop.
Its hard drive comes up as nvme0p1 and nvme0p2 or something along those lines.
That has been corrupted I think and no longer loads . I'm guessing though its been given the same ID as the USB I'm trying to boot from.

Using the new USB install it now gives me this conflict of drives message that I have had to photograph and I'll get the shots here shortly.
Here is a screenshot of the limine.cfg file as it is found on the first partition. I tried changing one number in that ID to see what happened. The messages changed.

Limine.cfg.png (118.44 KiB) Viewed 1954 times

When I can edit and size the photos of the screen messages I'll put them up here.

This is the boot from USB result

IMG_20221227_175212.jpg (43.19 KiB) Viewed 1950 times

This after I changed the limine.cfg

IMG_20221227_175539.jpg (87.42 KiB) Viewed 1950 times

Any help to restart the laptop appreciated but no longer blindly followed sorry.

I just had a thought to d/l the GParted.img if I can find it and see if a usb stick will load that and format the hard drive. Everything will be lost but at least I might get the laptop back.

[BarryK]

You can assign a new random uuid to a ext4 partition like this, where for example sdb2 is the ext4 partition:

Code: Select all

# tune2fs -U time /dev/sdb2

[April]

With a terminal opened in sdc2 and from desktop.

Code: Select all

root#  tune2fs -U time /dev/sdc2
tune2fs 1.42.13 (17-May-2015)
tune2fs: Filesystem has unsupported feature(s) while trying to open /dev/sdc2
Couldn't find valid filesystem superblock.
root# 

I see "time" is not in the --help menu nor is --help

Code: Select all

root# tune2fs --help
tune2fs 1.42.13 (17-May-2015)
tune2fs: invalid option -- '-'
Usage: tune2fs [-c max_mounts_count] [-e errors_behavior] [-g group]
	[-i interval[d|m|w]] [-j] [-J journal_options] [-l]
	[-m reserved_blocks_percent] [-o [^]mount_options[,...]] [-p mmp_update_interval]
	[-r reserved_blocks_count] [-u user] [-C mount_count] [-L volume_label]
	[-M last_mounted_dir] [-O [^]feature[,...]]
	[-Q quota_options]
	[-E extended-option[,...]] [-T last_check_time] [-U UUID]
	[ -I new_inode_size ] device
root# 

Have not been able to get gparted live onto a USB stick and running yet either. Why are these things made so incredibly complex?

[BarryK]

"-U time" is explained here:

https://linux.die.net/man/8/tune2fs

It is for assigning a new random UUID.

The error message when you tried to run tune2fs is strange.
Is sdc2 really a ext4 filesystem?

This will confirm:

# blkid /dev/sdc2

[williwaw]

I seem to have a later version of tune2fs

Code: Select all

0 ~ # tune2fs --help
tune2fs 1.45.7 (28-Jan-2021)
tune2fs: invalid option -- '-'
Usage: tune2fs [-c max_mounts_count] [-e errors_behavior] [-f] [-g group]
	[-i interval[d|m|w]] [-j] [-J journal_options] [-l]
	[-m reserved_blocks_percent] [-o [^]mount_options[,...]]
	[-r reserved_blocks_count] [-u user] [-C mount_count]
	[-L volume_label] [-M last_mounted_dir]
	[-O [^]feature[,...]] [-Q quota_options]
	[-E extended-option[,...]] [-T last_check_time] [-U UUID]
	[-I new_inode_size] [-z undo_file] device
1 ~ # 

additional info snipped from pupsysinfo

Code: Select all

Operating System:
 Distro Name                Easy Dunfell64 4.4 (amd64)
 Binary Base                oe
 Distro Base                dunfell
 Distro Date                Sep 2022
 Window Manager             JWM v2.4.2
 Desktop Start              xwin jwm

Linux Kernel:
 Kernel Build               5.15.69 (x86_64)
 Build Date                 Tue Sep 20 21:56:00 AWST 2022

snipped~~~

▶Active/Mounted Partitions (df -h):

 Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
 /dev/sda1       2.0G  400K  2.0G   1% /mnt/sda1
 /dev/sda2        49G   23G   25G  48% /mnt/sda2

▶All Partitions (probepart):

 sda1            vfat	 2.0G
 sda2            ext4	 50.0G

[April]

I have two usb sticks with EasyOS 4.5.3 on them .One with Ventoy on it. Ventoy comes up but will not load. The other is giving the error messages posted above when I try to boot fom it, I'm pretty sure its because my hard drive had a copy of Easy 4.5.3 on it which is corrupt.

Code: Select all

root# blkid /dev/sdb1
/dev/sdb1: SEC_TYPE="msdos" UUID="7CF2-4252" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="35e141c5-01"
root# blkid /dev/sdb2
/dev/sdb2: LABEL="easy2" UUID="1ca8506e-79f5-11ed-b964-287fcfeb4376" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="35e141c5-02"
root# 

Its getting a bit too deep for me I think. I will have to d/l the latest version to get time it seems. Do you guys think this will fix my problem ? I'd really like to get my new laptop back to running EasyOS. I hate giving up.

-U UUID
Set the universally unique identifier (UUID) of the filesystem to UUID. The format of the UUID is a series of hex digits separated by hyphens, like this: "c1b9d5a2-f162-11cf-9ece-0020afc76f16". The UUID parameter may also be one of the following:
clear
clear the filesystem UUID
random
generate a new randomly-generated UUID
time
generate a new time-based UUID

The UUID may be used by
mount(8), fsck(8), and /etc/fstab(5) (and possibly others) by specifying UUID=uuid instead of a block special device name like /dev/hda1.
See
uuidgen(8) for more information. If the system does not have a good random number generator such as /dev/random or /dev/urandom, tune2fs will automatically use a time-based UUID instead of a randomly-generated UUID.

I am also interested in what this message means?

Code: Select all

root# tune2fs -l /dev/sdb2
tune2fs 1.42.13 (17-May-2015)
tune2fs: Filesystem has unsupported feature(s) while trying to open /dev/sdb2
Couldn't find valid filesystem superblock.
root#