Adding a USB Linux to Fatdog's Grub menu - SOLVED (sort of)

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drongo
Posts: 374
Joined: Sat 10 Dec 2005, 23:35
Location: UK

Adding a USB Linux to Fatdog's Grub menu - SOLVED (sort of)

#1 Post by drongo »

I can boot SLAX 7 from a CD on my laptop but I'd like to boot it from a USB stick.

My laptop doesn't let me specify USB booting for some reason. (It's a Toshiba Portege R700 - 1DD).

I have Windows 7 and Fatdog on this machine so I thought I'd add SLAX in as a boot option in Grub but I can't get it to work.

My menu.lst currently looks like this:-

timeout 5
title fatdog
root (hd0,5)
kernel /vmlinuz search
initrd /initrd

title slax7
root (hd1,0)
kernel /vmlinuz
initrd /initrd

I get the fatdog and slax7 options when booting but if I select slax7 grub can't find the kernel.

That's probably because I haven't specified the path correctly, but none of the options I have tried so far work.

Fatdog sees the Slax kernel as /mnt/sdb1/slax/boot/vmlinuz - so what should I be typing after the word kernel so that grub can find it?

For bonus points, Slax doesn't seem to have initrd at all. There's an initrfs.img and isolinux.bin - should I be using them?

Alternatively, can anyone recommend a decent site with examples of Grub menu.lst files? (Because I haven't found one yet!)
Last edited by drongo on Wed 30 Jan 2013, 18:15, edited 1 time in total.

ChpFrI
Posts: 8
Joined: Mon 28 Jan 2013, 05:50

USB boot

#2 Post by ChpFrI »

Hi fellow Kauler disciple. R U sure the Toshiba laptop has no USB-HDD boot order menu in the BIOS (or UEFI) setup menu? The USB-HDD boot after the CD boot must B switched on. On my Gigabyte desktop it has2 B USB-HDD not USB-FDD or USB-ZIP for USB booting 2 work. After being able 2 boot via USB, update-grub or menu-config for GRUB2 would have2 B run with the USB stick mounted. :)

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drongo
Posts: 374
Joined: Sat 10 Dec 2005, 23:35
Location: UK

No USB option in BIOS

#3 Post by drongo »

Hi ChpFrl,

F12 is supposed to take me into BIOS setup (this machine predates UEFI) but it has always been a bit hit and miss. Now all I ever get is a load of Windows "safeboot" and recovery options. This never happened before I installed Fatdog, I suspect Windows 7 is jealous.

I pressed "c" to get to grub command line but when I tried "find /vmlinuz" it only found the one on the fatdog partition.

I can boot other Puppies and SLAX from CD with no problems, so F12 must have worked properly once because I set the BIOS up to boot from CD first.

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rcrsn51
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Joined: Tue 05 Sep 2006, 13:50
Location: Stratford, Ontario

Re: Adding a USB Linux to Fatdog's Grub menu

#4 Post by rcrsn51 »

drongo wrote:root (hd1,0)
GRUB does not have USB drivers. So at boot time, it doesn't know that (hd1,0) is a flash drive. It assumes that (hd1,0) is a second hard drive and fails. If you can't get your BIOS to boot off the flash drive, you could try an alternate bootloader like PLOP. But that might be risky with Win7 involved.
kernel /vmlinuz
initrd /initrd
Look on your Slax CD for a file like isolinux.cfg. It will show you the files that Slax uses to boot.

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drongo
Posts: 374
Joined: Sat 10 Dec 2005, 23:35
Location: UK

#5 Post by drongo »

Thanks. I didn't know about grub not having USB drivers, although that seems obvious now.

I'll boot from CD on this machine and keep the USB SLAX for other machines.

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