Plop boot manager and Plopkexec

[watchdog]

My laptop can boot only CD-DVD and HD. I use Plop boot manager and Plopkexec to boot respectively usb sticks and sd cards. I have grub4dos on the main HD sda1 (I have also grub2 but I'll talk about grub4dos only). Download Plop boot manager and Plopkexec from:

https://download.plop.at/files/bootmngr ... 5.0.15.zip

https://download.plop.at/plopkexec/plop ... bin.tar.gz

Upack the archives with xarchive (just click on them and extract) and copy in a /mnt/home/boot dir the files plpt.bin and plopkexec (there is also plopkexec64 but I'm using the 32 bit version which is working fine for me). Edit /mnt/home/menu-advanced.lst and insert the following code:

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title PLOP boot manager (sda1/boot)
  uuid xxxxxxxxx
  kernel /boot/plpbt.bin
  
title Plopkexec (sda1/boot)
  uuid xxxxxxxxx
  kernel /boot/plopkexec

Replace "xxxxxxxx" with uuid of your HD. To find it open a console and type:

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blkid

Now you have in the advanced menu of grub4dos plop and plopkexec. Insert a usb stick and PLOP boot manager is generally capable to boot it. Select USB. If it does not work try before troubleshooting to type Alt-u on USB selection. Then Skip. It is possible two or three times Skip and then Enter. About Plopkexec it can boot sd cards fat32 formatted.

I have disabled UEFI boot on my machine (it's possible for my case). I do not know much about UEFI boot.

[gyrog]

For some versions of grub4dos you may need to replace

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  uuid xxxxxxxxx

with

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  find --set-root --ignore-floppies uuid () xxxxxxxxx

[gyrog]

@watchdog,
Thanks for starting this topic.

Now to my questions:

Can you configure Plopkexec with a menu for subsequent booting?
e.g. if you have a laptop with a builtin SD card reader and you always leave the SD card inserted.

Does plopkexec boot the Puppies on the SD card directly, or does it boot another bootloader on the SD card?

[watchdog]

Can you configure Plopkexec with a menu for subsequent booting? Does plopkexec boot the Puppies on the SD card directly, or does it boot another bootloader on the SD card?

I do not know about a menu for subsequent booting of plopkexec. I have continued to testing and I have a more friendly and easier how-to.
Installing syslinux on the sd card is not required. Format fat32 the sd card with label boot and set the flag boot. Is it needed? I think probably plopkexec simply searches for a kernel and the isolinux.cfg on the sd card without any other trouble. Copy the content of any recent puppy iso on to the sd card (mmcblk0p1). Change /boot/isolinux/isolinux.cfg to match the following:

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default syslinux
LABEL syslinux
COM32 /chain.c32
kernel /vmlinuz 
append initrd=/initrd.gz pmedia=ataflash pfix=fsck

Now you can boot the sd card with plopkexec. This works for me with ScPup64.

Plopkexec can boot also a usb stick prepared in the same way. You can use a sd card or a usb stick prepared with frugalpup or ready to boot with grub4dos or grub2: but do not use a dedicated dir. Copy the content of the puppy iso at root dir of the sd card or usb stick. A bootloader on the sd card or usb stick is not needed to boot it with plopkexec. Only isolinux.cfg must be changed.

[gyrog]

Using @watchdog's posts I've been exploring 'plopkexec'.
I've now integrated it into my setup, here is how I did it.

1 Install 'plopkexec' as though it were another Puppy linux, after all it is a linux kernel.
Here is my 'grub4dos' boot entry for 'tahr':

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title Puppy tahr 6.0.6 (sda99/tahr)
  find --set-root --ignore-floppies uuid () nnnnnnnn-nnnn-nnnn-nnnn-nnnnnnnnnnnn
  kernel /puppy/tahr/vmlinuz libata.noacpi=1 intel_pstate=disable pmedia=atahd pdrv=LABEL psubdir=/puppy/tahr adrv=:/puppy/pcmanfm-1.2.3-7.sfs psave=Work:/pupsaves/tahr/ pfix=fsckp,trim,nocopy TZ=AEST-10
  initrd /puppy/tahr/initrd.gz

And here is my 'grub4dos' boot entry for 'plopexec':

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title Plopkexec (sda99/plop)
  find --set-root --ignore-floppies uuid () nnnnnnnn-nnnn-nnnn-nnnn-nnnnnnnnnnnn
  kernel /plop/plopkexec libata.noacpi=1 TZ=AEST-10

At this point you should be able to boot 'plopexec' from your normal grub4dos menu.
Hopefully it will boot, run, and find no linux's it can boot.

2 Create a 'plopkexec.cfg' file that 'plopkexec' will find.
This file contains 'syslinux' style boot entries for each of the Puppies on the partition.
It is located in the root dierectory of the partition that contains the Puppies.
Here is my 'plopkexec' boot entry for 'eslacko64' on a usb HD:

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LABEL eslacko64 6.9.9.10
  KERNEL /eslacko64/vmlinuz
  APPEND libata.noacpi=1 net.ifnames=0 pmedia=usbhd pdrv=usbLABEL psubdir=/eslacko64 pfix=fsck,fsckp TZ=AEST-10
  INITRD /eslacko64/initrd.gz 

That's it.

So, with 'plopkexec' now installed on my machine, all I have to do is:
After setting-up a "normal" usb boot device, I add a 'plopkexec.cfg' file to the root directory of the partition containing the Puppies.
Then with the usb device inserted, I reboot into 'plopkexec' and it displays a boot menu for the Puppies on the usb partition containing the 'plopkexec.cfg' file, afer a slight delay, it seems to be on a second try.

IMPORTANT:
The 'plopkexec.cfg' for a partition, resides in the root directory of the partition.
e.g. if a bootable usbstick is produced using 'f2StickPup', the 'plopkexec.cfg' file goes in the 'f2fs' partition, not the 'vfat' partition.

'mk-plopkexec-cfg':
Typing an appropriate set of 'syslinux' style boot entries into a text editor is unattractive,
so I have writen a little script called 'mk-plopkexec-cfg' that does this little task.
It takes a single parameter, the full path to the directory containing the Puppies.
It writes the generated 'mk-plopkexec-cfg' to the mount-point for the partition containing the specified directory.
e.g. After producing a bootable usb stick with 'fsStickPup' (the unreleased next version), and running the command:

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./mk-plopkexec-cfg /mnt/sdc2/puppy

the file '/mnt/sdc2/plopkexec.cfg' contains:

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LABEL eslacko64 6.9.9.10
  KERNEL /puppy/eslacko64/vmlinuz
  APPEND net.ifnames=0 libata.noacpi=1 pmedia=usbhd pdrv=f2Pup-nnnnnnnn-02 psubdir=/puppy/eslacko64 pfix=fsck,fsckp TZ=AEST-10
  INITRD /puppy/eslacko64/initrd.gz 

Note: 'mk-plopkexec-cfg' uses the 'bootentry' script, so the current 'FrugalPup' must be installed.

I have attached 'mk-plopkexec-cfg.gz', simply download it, and unzip it.
Then execute "./mk-plopkexec-cfg" in the directory that contains it.

mk-plopkexec-cfg.gz

unzip to produce script file

(595 Bytes) Downloaded 81 times

[venn]

Hi all,
In reading this, please keep in mind I’m new to Linux and debated with myself if I should actually put this question in the Beginners area. So while I tried to follow the above solution, I couldn’t make heads or tails of it - so am not even sure the below may be a different problem.

I successfully installed Plop, to access USB boot capability, on an IBM ThinkPad T20
Hard drive size (GB): 11.2
Processor (MHz): Not entirely sure - BIOS says 700MHz, under System Info. Manager says "x86 Family 6 Model 8 Stepping 3 Intel ~547Mhz", under My Computer + right click to Properties says 426MHz. What I know for sure - it has the Pentium 3 logo sticker w/ a 2nd sticker saying the computer was designed for Windows 98|2000.
RAM/Installed Physical Memory (MB): 348

which has 2 partitions: Windows XP Pro, Version 2002, SP3 on sda1 + full install 32bit Tahr 6.0.5 on sda2, booted (I’m pretty sure) by Grub4dos. I get to the Plop menu by 1st saying in Grub4dos screen that I want to boot XP.

Plop successfully starts the Tahr boot on the FAT32 formatted USB, which I burnt using USBimager.exe inside Windows 2000 Pro, which also successfully burnt a ZorinLite USB. However, it doesn’t get very far, showing me these few lines after the initial Tahr boot screen:

Loading drivers needed to access disk drives done
Searching for Puppy files......puppy_tahr_6.0.5.sfs not found. Dropping out to initial-ramdisk console...
#

Now, when I view the USB contents on the Hard Drive installed Tahr, I see the .sfs is indeed present.

The closest to finding an answer was the following:
https://superuser.com/questions/1280162 ... uppy-linux

The last answer on this thread makes it seem like the USB simply needs to be reformatted before being burnt again, but ever-so-conveniently doesn’t mention what that format is. I suspect it is a more Linux friendly format like ext3, but don’t understand why this makes a difference b/c I didn’t reformat the USB I burnt to make a bootable ZorinLite.

Are Puppy requirements different that the USB format would make a difference? Or maybe simply putting a TahrPup bootable DVD in with the USB, so I could simply pull the DVD’s ,sfs onto the USB - like maybe something just went wrong in USBimager despite it saying it successfully burnt? Or would doing that some how corrupt the USB?

Note: Same results from the USB when tried on a computer that will boot from USB without Plop installed.
Thanks for your consideration.

[rockedge]

Hello!

You need to install a bootloader on the USB stick that has the Tahr installed on it. The Plop boot manager will "see" the USB drive and attempt to boot it. That signals the MBR bootloader on the USB drive to get the boot commands from menu.lst to find the Puppy Linux SFS files and start Puppy Linux. It would be possible to use Grub4Dos to install the MBR bootloader on the USB drive.

Can you boot from a CD-ROM of Tahr so you can run GParted and Grub4Dos?? It would be pretty easy to set up the USB that way??

Plop boots the first stage then chains over to the second stage MBR bootloader on the USB drive and boot the Tahr installed on it .

[venn]

To answer your question: Yes, I can still boot from the Optical Drive. I can have the bootable Tahrpup DVD + USB put into the laptop that I have Tahr boot off the Hard Drive, where I can see they both have the same 12 files on them.

In pulling up Gparted + Grub4dosConfig windows, I’m not seeing anything jumping out at me as being able to install a bootloader onto the USB and I’m lost as to how Gparted has any role in this process.

In the Grub4dosConfig window, under “Where to install bootup loader (Grub4dos)? Usually on the MBR of the 1st drive” I only get the choices of sda [the hard drive where it is already installed] or fd0 | FLOPPY DISK. Is the issue that I need to create another partition on the bootable USB, as currently there is only 1 (per Gparted: formatted as “allocated”), to house the bootloader separate from the booting files?

[rockedge]

Use GParted to set the usb drive partition's boot flag so Grub4Dos can see the drive/partition as bootable.

Look in Partitions->Manage Flags and set the boot flag.

[venn]

The basic answer that worked in the end:
It appears the issue was with using USBimager.exe to burn the USB, despite USBimager creating a perfectly bootable ZorinLite USB. I finally remembered Puppy has an internal USB installer, which created the working boot USB. The USB works on computers that need Plop to boot from the USB, but for some odd reason it does not work on a computer that does not need Plop.

If you really want to know everything I did before the above:

Attempt 1:
Steps I tried (even though I pretty much it wouldn’t work b/c it would only create a data storage USB):
Since USBImager.exe sets the USB to unformatted, I didn’t see a way to change the flag to boot. So I thought I needed to reformat the USB to copy the files from the Puppy DVD to the USB. So did as follows:

1) Reformatted USB to FAT32.
2) Used Gparted to shrink the primary partition to 7gb with a Boot flag, rest was unallocated
3) Attempted to create another partition to put Grub4dos on, Gparted wouldn’t do that due to some error.
4) Copied Tahrpup files from the DVD to the USB

Results - Doesn’t boot saying:
ISOLINUX 3.73 2009-02-25 EHDD Copyright (C) 1994-2000 H. Peter Anvin
Unknown keyword in configuration file:D
Could not find kernel image: Linux
boot:

I looked in the Grub4dos Bootloader Config window again, which at least it gives me the USB as a choice to install it to now, but it doesn’t look like the options are any that I should pick for installing Grub4dos to run as a USB boot:
Frugal Puppy (Not found)
Full Install Puppy {Tahrpup 6.0.5 (sda2/boot)}
Windows {Microsoft Windows XP Professional (sda1)}

This is what was the same as was setup grub4dos for the dual booting hard drive...nothing about booting from a USB.

Attempt 2:
So then I redid the USBimager.exe burn again, in the hopes that the boot flag from the above steps was retained, but USBimager must overwrite everything because I’m back to having what should be a USB bootable Tahrpup, but won’t + Gparted says the format is unallocated.

Attempt 3:
In reading a couple of things, it seemed like I should create separate partitions for the Puppy files + Grub4dos:
http://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=6762
https://cects.com/multi-boot-usb-with-s ... -grub4dos/

So I split the USB into 5.5gb + 2gb FAT32, both w/ boot flag, with 0.5 unallocated. Redid USBimager on the 5.5gb partition, results in the same as message as when I 1st posted this question:
Searching for Puppy files......puppy_tahr_6.0.5.sfs not found. Dropping out to initial-ramdisk console...

Upon inspecting the USB, I see USBimager wiped out the 2gb partition I made, merging everything into 1 partition per Gparted, but per EaseUS Partition Manager the Puppy files are in 1 “other” formatted partition + the rest is unallocated. So I tried reformatting the unallocated to FAT32, set the boot flag in Gparted, to see if I could install Grub4dos on that. It did, Plop will move through to the Grub4dos screen, but still will not boot from the USB (on both a computer that needs Plop to boot from USB + a computer that does not need Plop).