FatDog: flashdrives && #@$%ing secure boot...(Solved)

[gcmartin]

Hi @Rover
You share 2 different issues in your post

1st Issue

Hi all,
I am at a point where I boot from usb with a flashdrive, and the boot process then shows the fatdog splash screen and hangs. ... Also, when I do boot fatdog from cd, ...

FATDOG64-6xx presents 2 new unique departures to traditional PUP use.

• UEFI boot processing
• Boot Manager

And, FATDOG also puts a "stake in the ground" on what is supported: DVD (not CD).

Much of what is covered here, in this thread, should be in the main thread so more FATDOG support eyes can see and support this important topic: topic = "Boot processing in FATDOG64-6xx". But, I do see value, too, by separating it to getting customed attention as its getting here.

I know that @JamesBond has taken time to try to explain this on off-site webpages, but, the message in its placement and further increasing details are NOT easily found by his webpages by the many non-technical types that do attempt FATDOG64-6xx, for it is a new approach in its deployment.

You mentioned CD, so I can only assume you may have gone from ISO to CD. This "may" be a problem. But, if you have used a DVD in multisession mode, you may be able to get your system to activate as you wish.

Questions

• Are you using DVDs?
• Is the PC you testing on UEFI system with its EFI features turned on?

2nd Issue

... seeing 5 hard drive partitions and the cd and a usb dongle if I have that attached.
They show up as sda1,sda2 etc to 5.
my hard drive is a new laptop hd, with the usual first partition used by toshiba with the reinstall fallback, and then the second is the actual win 8.1 operating system. I have no idea what the other 3 are unless my playing around created them somehow

On your hard-drive (abbreviated "HDD") most systems over the years come with 3 partitions, some had 4 partitions. Not sure in your case. But to address this, you could help us by:

1. Indicating which FATDOG6xx version you are running (630rc1, 620, 630, ???)
2. opening GPARTED to your HDD
3. copy the GPARTED screen
4. posting a picture of your HDD

Doing so, would help a little as others may have the same factory configuration you suggest.

Hope this helps us help you.

[Ted Dog]

found workaround for getting efiboot.img open to copy contents.

copy somewhere and change .img to .3fs

then the correct program is run on mouse click and it sbould pop up with rox. Click efiboot.3fs again to unmount and close popup

sorry for delay...

[jtwdyp]

OK Now that I know how to extract the files from the efiboot.img
I was finally able to figure out the process...

Step 1) start with a Flashdrive that has an fat32 1st partition.

Step 2) extract the files from the fatdog iso: (copy them to the top
directory of the above mentioned fat32 partition...
method 1) click on the iso in the rox file manager.
When it opens drag the files to another rox window
open to the fat32 partition. and drag the files.
Method 2) Use midnight commander:
{Note: this works from my precise puppy 5.7.1,
But the mc in Fatdog failed...}
select the iso in one panel, hit enter to open it
as a virtual file system. tag everything. then with
the other panel open to the above fat32 directory,
hit F5...

Step 3) rename the efiboot.img to efiboot.3fs and *click on it in rox.
* I note that this didn't work from my precise puppy, but
* Fatdog's rox opened it easily...
* I also note that mc failed to open it in either Precise or
* Fatdog...
Drag the contents to the fat32 partition. Paying attention that
what's in the EFI folder MUST still be in an EFI folder in the
fat32 partition.

If the above is done correctly, the flash drive will boot on an UEFI
PC (with secure boot on.) Providing, of course, usb booting is enabled
in the setup menu. And of course, the first time, the secure boot
prompts you about accepting/trusting the new security keys. But after
that it should just work.

step 4) install a bios bootloader. Ted dog said you could boot the flash
drive on an EFI PC, and then use Fatdog to install syslinux and add a MBR
bootstrap... But since I've a better understanding of grub (legacy) And I had
an available Linux system using it, I found it jut as easy to copy the grub
folder from my Mageia Linux, edit it to find Fatdog's vmlinuz & initrd files.
Then I used Mageia's grub shell to install it to the flashdrive's MBR...
Which works for me...

I now have a Fatdog64-630 flash drive that boot both on my bios based PCs
but also booted on my Lady's daughter's Win8 secure boot laptop.

I note that regardless of whether It's booting via grub on a bios machine,
or via the EFI loader, it takes this duel method fatdog about three times
as long to boot as the {bios only} flash drive I made with the installer from the
fatdog control panel. But once running there is little, if any,
difference...

Thank you Ted dog, I couldn't have done it without your kind help.

[nooby]

jtwdyp a very good thing that you share that information,

I will try to keep it up front so me can look into it.
But me too lazy these days. But I did buy a UEFI
computer to tests suggestions in these threads.

Now I need to get strong enough to really do such tests´´
Now I am tired and sleepy already at 3 PM I mean come on way too early

[Ted Dog]

good to hear it worked and You had the key exchanges did as well. Could not test the keys until I got a new machine... But since everything was the same just moved it still worked.

[jtwdyp]

good to hear it worked and You had the key exchanges did as well. Could not test the keys until I got a new machine... But since everything was the same just moved it still worked.

Yeah, the key trust dialog was terse but forgiving... It wanted me to chose what to trust, and I blindly kept selecting things, to "trust" until I had trusted some combination of things sufficiently for it to suddenly start to boot Fatdog.

It might be nice if there was a tutorial as to which things need to be trusted... It was confusing enough that I have no idea which files I trusted... But I'm reasonably confident I could wing it again if I need to.

By the way, If I make a second fatdog64-630 flash drive using your method, and booted it on that same win8 machine, would it recognize that the keys it accepted are the same as ones as on the first flashdrive??

Or do I have to do that for each flash drive as well as for each win8 pc I boot them on???

[Ted Dog]

yep once machine accepts keys its locked into firmware... no need to do it again.. But I was not willing to dump all keys just incase I dumped windows8 keys I am sure they just do not hand those out...