UEFI and booting from USB

[Snail]

I am using Fossapup 9.5 now, booting on a desktop. However, the way I am doing it is clunky and just plain wrong and I am too ignorant to understand why, or how to fix it. HELP!!

I used Rufus 3.17 to transfer the Fossapup9.5 ISO contents to the USB (Says 16GB on the USB but actually less than 15). In Rufus, I set 2.44GB as the puppy partition and the rest of the USB as a persistent partition. On booting Puppy, I used GParted to resize the persistent partition and inserted a 3 GB Fat 32 partition in between the puppy partion and the Ext3 persistent one. This new partition is labelled sdb3, even though it is the second one on the device, according to GParted.

The desktop was second hand from a company that specialises in selling old commercial stuff. It is a no-name brand, using a Coolermaster box and an ASUS motherboard. PupSysInfo reports the motherboard to be:

Motherboard Vendor: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
Product Name: P8B75-M LX

Pressing the F2 key on startup gets me into the ASUS UEFI Bios Utility. Using this, I was able to set Fastboot off. For Secureboot, the options were "Windows UEFI" or "Other OS". There was no OFF option, so I selected "Other OS".

Unfortunately, I can't find a way to set the machine to permanently set the USB as the first boot option. The panel to change the boot order doesn't show the USB, I can only drag the order of the HDD and the CD drive. I can boot the USB by hitting a button that brings up a window showing the CD, HDD and USB in that order. Clicking on the USB boots it. So I can boot Puppy but, in order to do it, I always have to wait for the ASUS logo to appear on screen, hit F2 to get into the Bios Utility, hit the BOOT button and then click on the Fossapup USB. What a hassle! Help!

When the USB boots, I get to a Grub4Dos screen. I thought that Grub4dos wasn't right for UEFI systems? However, it does work. Is it optimal though?

The next thing I noticed is that every Grub4Dos stanza has pmedia=CD. This is clearly wrong for booting a USB device. What files on the USB do I need to edit to fix this?

Clearly, the Grub4Dos stanzas come from the Fossapup ISO. Given that CDs are now rarer than rocking-horse manure, why is the Fossapup ISO set up like that? Should it be changed in later versions?

Finally, I set up the second Fat32 partition, based on advice on this forum that this was the best way to transfer files between a Windows bootup and Fossapup session. However, when I boot into Windows 7, which only requires switching the machine on, Windows only sees the puppy partition, which is the first partition on the USB, formatted Fat32 by Rufus. The Fat 32 partition I made with GParted, is invisible to Windows 7, even though Fossapup can see it fine. As a result, the partition is useless. Is there a fix for that? (I believe that Puppies could write directly to Windows NFS partitions but that it risks corrupting the partition. However, I understand that there was talk of a much newer and better NFS driver being accepted directly into the Linux kernel. Any news on that?)

[williwaw]

The panel to change the boot order doesn't show the USB

is the usb plugged in when you are looking for it in the menu?

lots of different questions, but not big issues to resolve. Could you possibly present one issue at a time, maybe most important first?

[wizard]

Per williwaw

is the usb plugged in when you are looking for it in the menu?

If it still does not show you might fix it by updating the bios.

wizard

[wiak]

Maybe take photos of the main BIOS screens regarding both Secure Boot and Boot Order and anything like that since difficult to comment without seeing the actual menus and BIOS menus are often different looking.

[bigpup]

For Secureboot, the options were "Windows UEFI" or "Other OS". There was no OFF option, so I selected "Other OS".

For this version of UEFI, that is the correct way to disable secure boot.
"other OS" buts the UEFI into a legacy mode that works like the old Bios.
Grub4dos boot loader can work with that mode .

When the USB boots, I get to a Grub4Dos screen. I thought that Grub4dos wasn't right for UEFI systems? However, it does work. Is it optimal though?

It is optimal with secure boot disabled.
All secure boot does is prevent booting using a operating system that does not have a security key.
Puppy ISO's do not have a Puppy security key or the program to install it.
So you need to set the UEFI bios to not require one. (secure boot disabled)

I have been running my computer for 4 years, with secure boot disabled, booting all different versions of Puppy Linux, using Grub4dos boot loader, to boot it.
Never had a issue.

If having secure boot enabled is something you have to have.
Frugalpup Installer can do a Puppy install to a drive and install a UEFI boot loader, that will work with secure boot enabled.
It also installs the needed Puppy security key and program, to install the Puppy security key on the computer.
https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=337

[Snail]

For Secureboot, the options were "Windows UEFI" or "Other OS". There was no OFF option, so I selected "Other OS".

For this version of UEFI, that is the correct way to disable secure boot.
"other OS" buts the UEFI into a legacy mode that works like the old Bios.
Grub4dos boot loader can work with that mode .

Thanks Bigpup,

Good to know I did something right.

[bigpup]

About the UEFI bios setup options.
When you press F2 and get into the bios setup.

Any changes you make, can be saved, so they are now those settings.
Just have to use the correct exit selection.
The one that saves changes.
The UEFI will now boot that way.

One setting to look for is USB booting option.
Usually it will be something like allow USB booting.
With options to enable or disable.
You want that set to enable.

That could keep the USB drive from showing in the boot device order setting.

[bigpup]

About pmedia=cd changing it to pmedia=usbflash in the boot loader menu entries.

Fossapup64 9.5 has several different boot loader menu config files, so it can boot OK on very old and very new computers.
They are there for a Fossapup64 live install, that will use the boot loaders that come in the ISO.
I think Rufus actually does a live install and uses the boot loaders in the ISO.

So look on the USB partition that has all the Fossapup64 files.
grub.cfg
menu.lst
One of these is being used to provide the boot menu.
Grub4dos uses menu.lst.
But i would edit both of them. They are kind of interconnected the way boot loader stuff is in the Fossapup64 ISO.

So open them in a text editor.
edit any pmedia= entry to read pmedia=usbflash.

[bigpup]

The installer programs that are in different Puppy versions are better to use.
They are setup to do correct installs of Puppy Linux, to specific types of drives.

I highly recommend using the Frugalpup Installer.
https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=337

[Snail]

OK, I've edited both menu.lst and grub.cfc to change all pmedia=cd to pmedia=usbflash and that works ok. I am still curious about why this change isn't standard in the various Puppy ISOs though.

I've changed boot order on a number of systems in the past but this ASUS UEFI Bios utility's section on booting seems to have been programmed by a committee of orang-utangs. The motherboard manual is no help. It isn't a matter of me not saving changes to the boot order, it's that the usb never shows up in any panel that allows me to select its priority. It only shows up in places where, if I click on it, it immediately boots. So I can boot Fossapup every time, but not without going into the Bios on the way. Either there is something not quite right in the setup of the USB or, I think quite possibly, ASUS's bios is faulty. There have been several updates to this bios since 2013 but I've never flashed one before.

[williwaw]

the manual describes an ez mode and an advanced mode
under the advanced mode there is section 2.5.x worth looking at if you have not already

The USB Devices item shows the auto-detected values. If no USB device is detected, the
item shows None.

if the board is old and the usb is new, perhaps see if the bios will detect an older usb

[bigpup]

I've edited both menu.lst and grub.cfc to change all pmedia=cd to pmedia=usbflash and that works ok. I am still curious about why this change isn't standard in the various Puppy ISOs though.

The ISO is still setup to burn to a CD/DVD and boot from it.

The Installer programs, that come in Puppy versions, know about making this change, when they do installs to USB drives.

[Snail]

Thanks everyone for your help. I'm resigning myself to just using F2 every time I boot Fossapup. This desktop isn't used all that often, so I can live with it. Annoying though.

The bios recognises the USB stick just fine, if it is plugged in before hard startup. If I plug it in after entering the bios program, the USB flashes but it doesn't show up, however that's not really a problem.

Unfortunately, although the USB stick shows up in several panels, some of which which when selected proceed to boot from the USB, there is no way that works to change the boot order. I have roamed through both the advanced setup and the EZ setup panels and there is nothing I can see that can be set to improve matters. The manual is no use at my level of ignorance.

There have been a number of bios upgrades since this 1002 version that is dated 2013. However the descriptions of the reasons for each upgrade do not mention my problem. Since I am clearly out of my depth here, I have therefore decided against risking bricking this old system by changing the bios.

[Phoenix]

The USB since it is removable, will not have a permanent entry no matter what you do. Best you can do is install rEFInd and set it as the bootloader via the steps provided at https://rodsbooks.com/refind/installing.html. Then if you happen to plug in the USB after it boots up all you have to do is press ESC to refresh the devices and select the USB.
EDIT: I myself also use ASUS and use rEFInd to handle the non-persistent USB entries. It's probably part of UEFI specifications though so using another brand might not solve your problem.
EDIT1: Yes Grub4DOS doesn't actually work on UEFI. Some systems however implement fallback solutions to legacy style BIOS. (MBR)
EDIT2: You can't actually see multiple partitions on a USB until windows 10, sadly. I don't know why Microsoft never designed for such an contingency.
EDIT3: Yes its a bit silly to set pmedia=cd but it works fine since puppy will see no such device and will continue its search.
EDIT4: Puppies now since Tahr at the very least have working NTFS implementations that won't damage NTFS. But since NTFS remains closed-source, it will always carry that risk, however minimal it is. The definite or near likely case of damage is when you hibernate windows or have windows using fast startup.
EDIT6: Too many edits already! For the news about the better, or perhaps just faster in general since its kernel space and not userspace/FUSE-based; the NTFS3 implementation by Paragon (commercial) has been merged in since Linux 5.15. Granted depending on which Puppy you use (Most of them), you'll probably need to scrounge around on this forum for a Puppy that uses a kernel with NTFS3 and also has been modified to use the correct filesystem type. Yes, you heard that, you can use both implementations at the same time if you truly desire. So now there are two filesystem types that do roughly the same thing. ntfs and ntfs3
EDIT7: The partition device number is assigned by Linux and is based on when they were created. The first one to be created will get no. 1, and so one. Block/logical ordering does not matter. (Windows sort of does this, given you can assign arbitrary letter drives irregardless of order)
EDIT8: Absolutely do not touch the BIOS firmware unless you got the stuff from ASUS itself, unless you happen to be able to reverse any very very bad mistakes you do. The utility itself will reject anything that doesn't 'fit' but there are other ways to modify the BIOS firmware. (This may cost quite a lot including repairs and buying the stuff needed if you make tons of mistakes. Rule no 1: Static and Voltage is the enemy of everything)

[bigpup]

If you keep the USB drive always plugged in.
Then you can select it in the bios setup boot device order setting.
Make it the first device to try to boot from.

You cannot unplug and plug it in and keep this setting.

[Snail]

I haven't been unplugging the USB. Still doesn't behave. I am certain that on older machines, pre-UEFI, I was able to plug in the USB and boot from it without needing to enter the bios. If I started the machine without a USB, it would boot the full installed OS, Linux or Windows, normally. I can't see why this should be impossible now but c'est la vie.

[Snail]

Bigpup, it's not just that I can't make the boot device order permanent, I cannot even get to even start changing the boot order This is because the although the USB appears in a couple of places where I can select it for immediate boot, there seems no way to set the boot order, let alone save it. In EZ mode the USB doesn't show in the boot order selection window. In advanced mode the boot order selection is seems unnecessarily complicated but no combination of actions appear to affect anything.

Let's forget this bit. I am grateful for the interest that you have taken in my problem but we are all going around in circles and it isn't getting us any closer to a solution. I do have one more unanswered question from my first post, that is, how can I make it possible for Windows 7 to see the second Fat32 partition on the USB stick? Any ideas please?

[williams2]

how can I make it possible for Windows 7 to see the second Fat32 partition on the USB stick?

I think MSWindows sees fat32/vfat/ntfs partitions, until it sees a Linux partition, which it does not recognize, so it stops looking.

[Snail]

Forget my last question. I have done a quick search on the wider web and it appears that no version of windows earlier than 10 can see more than one partition on a USB stick. Not without a lot of stuffing around with some third-party software anyway. So the advice on this forum to create a second vfat partition on the USB needs to be qualified by the caveat that you should do this only with Windows 10 or 11 in mind.

Williams2, actually I created the second Fat32 partition immediately behind the first, boot one. So in this case your suggestion doesn't apply. The Persistence partition is now the third partition. However, Puppy names and lists the sdb parttions in the order they were created, hence the second Fat32 partition shows up as sdb3. A bit odd that. GParted shows the actual location on disk fine though.

You can write to directly to a Windows NTFS partition using Puppy. I used to do it all the time in years gone by, until I was advised that I risked corrupting the NTFS partition by doing so. Is this still the current advice?

[williams2]

I can select it for immediate boot, there seems no way to set the boot order

The way my UEFI seems to work on my HP laptop is

By default, the UEFI MS Windows on my hard drive always automatically boots.
The only way to boot a usb flash drive is to press the F9 key to run the boot manager.

It seems to be impossible to set the bios to automatically boot from a usb drive or cd/dvd or to automatically run the boot manager.

I can change the boot order in the bios, but that only affects the order of the items in the boot manager list. The boot manager only starts if I press F9 when it boots.

If I do not have Legacy enabled, the boot manager only shows UEFI boot choices.

If I do have Legacy enabled, the boot manager shows UEFI boot choices.and legacy boot choices.

It might be possible to use LICK to boot a usb flash drive automatically,
I don't know, I have not used LICK.

If I forget to plugin the flash drive, I plug it in then reboot by pressing ctrl+alt+del
then press F9 to get the boot manager.

[Phoenix]

Bigpup, it's not just that I can't make the boot device order permanent, I cannot even get to even start changing the boot order This is because the although the USB appears in a couple of places where I can select it for immediate boot, there seems no way to set the boot order, let alone save it. In EZ mode the USB doesn't show in the boot order selection window. In advanced mode the boot order selection is seems unnecessarily complicated but no combination of actions appear to affect anything.

Let's forget this bit. I am grateful for the interest that you have taken in my problem but we are all going around in circles and it isn't getting us any closer to a solution. I do have one more unanswered question from my first post, that is, how can I make it possible for Windows 7 to see the second Fat32 partition on the USB stick? Any ideas please?

It is just not possible. I'm sorry, but its only until Windows 10 was the support added. Only the first will be seen.

[bigpup]

The desktop was second hand from a company that specialises in selling old commercial stuff

The UEFI bios, in this computer, could be modified by the people that produced this computer.
Manufactures of computers, have ability to modify the UEFI bios, to work the way they want it to.
Commercial computers, do not want it to be easy to boot from, with a OS on a USB drive.
That is a security issue, if someone could boot it, using an OS on a USB, and get access to all on computer.
Luckily the UEFI bios setup is not password protected.
I bet it was and the people that resold it, probably cleared the password out.

I have a UEFI bios computer that will not even see USB drives, to boot from, unless you set it to run in legacy mode, and disable secure boot.
Then it basically works like old style bios and A USB drive can be put in the first position of the boot drives order list.

Well UEFI bios was all over the place about how it would do stuff.
Every new version changed operation of UEFI.
In the early to mid years of development it had little bugs.

[Snail]

I wouldn't rule out the possibility that the bios developers were "encouraged" to make it hard to load alternatives to the installed OS, namely Windows. I have a Samsung Series 9 Lite laptop. On that one, setting the bios order is not too difficult. As long as you continue to boot from the USB, the new setting seems to be permanent. However, whenever you boot into Windows, the Bios reverts to only looking at the hard drive (SSD in this case). Hmmmm!

[Phoenix]

@Snail I know you said you didn't want to bring up the issue of setting the boot order/configuring the BIOS, but taking the route of using Windows itself to set the UEFI boot entry to rEFInd and using rEFInd to boot the usb is a solution not yet tried and will work the first time. If rEFInd is couped somehow, I have also linked it below.

The links to installing via Windows and obtaining rEFInd are here:
https://rodsbooks.com/refind/installing.html#windows
https://rodsbooks.com/refind/getting.html
https://rodsbooks.com/refind/bootcoup.html

[Snail]

Once again I am confused. I have just noticed that, according to GParted, my second-hand desktop's single HDD is formatted with a PCDOS MBR, which I understand is usually just called MBR. As delivered, Secure-boot and Fast-boot were both on in the UEFI Bios. That worked fine. I thought that that was supposed to be impossible, based on comments in this forum and elsewhere?

When I created a Fossapup USB stick, using Rufus, I turned off both Secure-boot and Fast-boot using ASus's UEFI, as recommended on this forum. Windows 7 still booted fine. Fossapup USB also booted fine, with the exception that I have to go into the Bios and select the stick manually at every boot. (This has already been covered extensively in this thread. I can live with it, boot to desktop from this USB is still way faster than Windows 7 booting to a usable desktop from the HDD.)

After I noticed that the HDD was setup with PCDOS-MBR, I experimented by turning Secure_boot and Fast-boot back on. It seems to make no difference whatever to booting either OS! It seems not to matter what these settings are. Am I safe leaving them on?

[Clarity]

... Am I safe leaving them on?

Yes

[Snail]

OK, now I have tried fiddling with the Bios CMS mode setting. There are 3 options: Auto;Enabled and Disabled. If it is set to anything but Enabled, neither the Windows HDD nor the Fossapup USB are even recognised, let alone booted. The comments in the Bios UI seem to indicate that Enabled is effectively pure legacy Bios boot mode? If this is the case, neither Fastboot nor Secureboot can be enabled, so it wouldn't be surprising that setting and un-setting them had no effect. I'm learning but it's a slow and painful process. A Snail's pace in fact.

[bigpup]

HDD is formatted with a PCDOS MBR, which I understand is usually just called MBR.

Same thing, just different ways to name it.

I have tried fiddling with the Bios CMS mode setting.

I think you are talking about CSM mode (compatibility support module) that when enabled, makes the UEFI bios work like old style legacy bios.

Depending on the UEFI bios version in the computer.
Exactly what CSM does, could be anything from 100% changes it to old style bios, to only affects some things.
From the beginning days of UEFI to what is UEFI today.
It was all over the place, exactly how it would work.
Seems with latest versions of UEFI firmware, they finally settled on 100%, it will work this way!

I find it is about, just using settings in the UEFI setup, that work for what you are trying to do.

Usually secure boot is automatically disabled when CSM is enabled.
Fast boot should still be select-able to enable or disable.
Again depends on the UEFI firmware version.

Fossapup64 9.5 seems to not really be affected by fast boot enabled or disabled.
But some Puppy versions will be, because fast boot enabled, will not give their boot process time to properly function.

[Phoenix]

HDD is formatted with a PCDOS MBR, which I understand is usually just called MBR.

Same thing, just different ways to name it.

I have tried fiddling with the Bios CMS mode setting.

I think you are talking about CSM mode (compatibility support module) that when enabled, makes the UEFI bios work like old style legacy bios.

Depending on the UEFI bios version in the computer.
Exactly what CSM does, could be anything from 100% changes it to old style bios, to only affects some things.
From the beginning days of UEFI to what is UEFI today.
It was all over the place, exactly how it would work.
Seems with latest versions of UEFI firmware, they finally settled on 100%, it will work this way!

I find it is about, just using settings in the UEFI setup, that work for what you are trying to do.

Usually secure boot is automatically disabled when CSM is enabled.
Fast boot should still be select-able to enable or disable.
Again depends on the UEFI firmware version.

Fossapup64 9.5 seems to not really be affected by fast boot enabled or disabled.
But some Puppy versions will be, because fast boot enabled, will not give their boot process time to properly function.

It's entirely possible if there's an EFI directory in any of the partitions and the manufacturer did follow the specification, that it booted in UEFI rather than using CSM. Granted, manufacturers don't seem to mind breaking a few specifications here and there.

[LateAdopter]

Forget my last question. I have done a quick search on the wider web and it appears that no version of windows earlier than 10 can see more than one partition on a USB stick. Not without a lot of stuffing around with some third-party software anyway. So the advice on this forum to create a second vfat partition on the USB needs to be qualified by the caveat that you should do this only with Windows 10 or 11 in mind.

The simplest solution it to have only one partition on the stick. Grub4DOS does not require a separate boot partition. You need to reformat the device so that the partition is the first entry in the MBR and put G4D and Puppy there and Windows will see it too.
If you want a separate boot partition you can make it the second entry in the MBR then G4D can boot from it but Windows won't look at it. Windows will still see the first partition in the MBR