Booting a DSL Poorman's with Grub or whatever your
Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: Booting a DSL Poorman's with Grub or whatever your
started by: clivesay
Posted by clivesay on Feb. 18 2005,20:06
Thought I would share since I got this up and going the other day. I recommend that everyone use Frugal when installing to a hard drive but some of us .dsl extension junkies like to have multiple poorman's installs for building and testing extensions and such.Basically, after you have the compressed KNOPPIX image on the partition, copy the /boot folder from the DSL CD to the root of that same partition. After you have done this, edit the grub menu file as described in the doc project < HERE >
It works like a charm for me. Don't ask me why you use savedefault instead of the commands used on the other examples. I just know that was what I had to use while multiple booting with the grub that was part of Mepis Linux.
Good luck.
Chris
Posted by mikshaw on Feb. 18 2005,23:12
I already had the CD contents on hda4, for use with remastering, and already had grub installed, so i just added this to my existing menu.lst:title DamnSmallLinux
kernel (hd0,3)/boot/isolinux/linux24 root=/dev/hda4
initrd (hd0,3)/boot/isolinux/minirt24.gz
Boots with no problem....except the console resolution is unbearably small. I tried adding vga=791, like i have in suse, but it didn't work.
what do i need to use to get a decent rez?
EDIT: got it....
kernel (hd0,3)/boot/isolinux/linux24 root=/dev/hda4 dsl vga=791 noicons dma
this is sweet =o)
Posted by adraker on Feb. 19 2005,05:29
Heya Chris/Mikshaw,I'm just a little confused with the "poormans install"
terminology...It seems to me that a "Frugal" is basically
a copy of the live CD contents to the partition of your choice-
(as long as it's hda), maybe theres more to it than that.....
And then that naughty Lilo thing happens....
(gotta see if I can comment that out).
But I'm just a bit hung on what exactly a "poormans
install" means.
I'm a Frugal fan now, at least- it's almost indestructable.
Hope you don't mind clarifying for me and perhaps others!
NB-
Adraker Corporation attaches no meaning whatsoever
to the word "indestructable", and assumes no responsibility
for people attacking their DSL installations with percussive,
incendiary, or nuclear devices.
Posted by mikshaw on Feb. 19 2005,05:38
I honestly don't know what the difference is. I have the contents of the CD copied to a ext3 partition (/KNOPPIX and /boot), and load it via grub. It's basically the same as using a liveCD, except that it uses grub and it is located on the harddrive rather than a CD. I assume this is what is called poormanI like this setup particularly because I don't have to use toram in order to use the cdrom, and I can set up multiple grub entries with different boot options using the same disk image
Posted by adraker on Feb. 19 2005,05:53
I see...Thanks Mikshaw, I'm going to try that on my main
machine, just copy the /KNOPPIX and /boot parts,
that means no Lilo from Frugal script, which I like.
Then mod the Grub menu, in my case it's under Red
Hat.
Sounds like a good idea.
Nirvana, here I come.. wayhaay!!
Posted by ke4nt1 on Feb. 19 2005,07:36
You are correct.."frugal" is the compressed filesystem on your HD - lilo booted.
"poormans" is the same compressed filesystem on your HD,
booted from CD or floppy, instead of the lilo loader.
The addition of booting a "poormans" with a grub loader is akin to a
modified frugal.. Either way, it beats a HDInstall hands down in ease
of upgrading, restoring, and recovering from errant processes or options.
Besides offering different "boot options" at boottime, you can also
boot different installs. I have 3, an XFree86 version ( my usual ),
a stock Xvesa ( for testing ), and a third for compiles and dev..
73
ke4nt
Posted by adraker on Feb. 19 2005,07:46
Hey ke4nt1,That says it clearly.
I may put Nirvana on hold-
I only have syslinux copy of DSL and may be
forced to use actual thinking.
Goosewebs!
Just when I'd slipped into lazy mode...
Posted by adraker on Feb. 19 2005,12:37
O.K. , time to share, in the tradition ofClivesay.
After booting my plain vanilla copy of DSL 0.9.3,
(SYSLINUX) ,and copying the /KNOPPIX part,
I had no /boot directory to copy to
my target partition, so I shamefully used bits of
Roberts frugal_instal.sh script- manually.
Extract of script-
# Now we need to extract files from the floppy boot image stored
# in the Knoppix boot directory. We'll need them for booting from
# the hard drive... Start by creating a mount point for the floppy
# image:
mkdir /mnt/bootimage
#echo "${BLUE}Setting up boot image on ${MAGENTA}/mnt/$TARGET${NORMAL}"
# Now mount the boot.img file using the loopback driver
mount -t vfat -o loop $IMAGE/KNOPPIX/boot.img /mnt/bootimage
# On the target drive we need a place to put the boot files
mkdir /mnt/$TARGET/boot
# Now copy the files from the floppy boot image:
cp -af /mnt/bootimage/* /mnt/$TARGET/boot
# Again, the "f" flag only needed for subsequent updates
# I think only "linux24" and "minirt24.gz" files are needed, but the
# others don't take up much space.
sync;sync
End of Extract
I can be a Pirate too!
Modifying my Grub menu in my main distro worked fine.
The Frugal boots!
And no risk to MBR!!
I hope that there wasn't an easier way to do this.
I'll bet I've missed something terribly obvious.
For which I will later kick myself.
But I wasn't in thinking mode anyway.
Posted by henk.1955 on Feb. 19 2005,15:58
now if you copy the KNOPPIX-file and the linux24 and minirt.gz of another dsl version in a directory named /dsl-version#and use the bootparameter knoppix_dir=/dsl-version#
you can have more then one dsl version on the same partion. which is handy if you want to try a new version (or your new remaster)
if the /etc/init.d/dsl-config is modified a little like i sugest in < dsl-extensions in folders >
you can have a mydsl_dir= bootparameter so you can select which extensions to load at boot-time
this way you can select from a wide range of dsl setups from one partition
Posted by clivesay on Feb. 19 2005,19:28
Dang, Henk I must have missed that post. That would be a real handy extra to have because, as you said, you could have multiple folders and boot multiple configurations from one compressed image. John, Robert - Can we get this cheatcode enhancement in the base distro?
Chris
Posted by adraker on Feb. 19 2005,22:09
Thanks Henk-I wasn't even aware of those boot-params.
Now my brain is twisted...
Posted by joer on Feb. 20 2005,02:47
I don't think those are valid boot params.
Posted by henk.1955 on Feb. 20 2005,11:18
if you read the /linuxrc file that is inside the minirt.gz you will find many usefull bootparamslike:
knoppix_dir=
knoppix_name=
toram
tohd=
bootfrom=
fromhd=
fromdvd
in /etc/init.d/knoppix-autoconfig you can find more bootparams like:
myconfig
noswap
nofstab
nohwsetup
then in /etc/init.d/dsl-config options like:
frugal, ssh, lp, nfs, monkey, syslog, users, ftp, write, base
mydsl=
this is only a small list of VERY usefull bootparams (boototions)