ISO boot from FAT/NTFS/USB (GRUB.exe, grldr from boot.ini)

[j.drake]

Afterscape, be sure to check the paths closely in your menu.lst. Just recently, I had occasion to go through this when bfree wrote a script to allow Kanotix to boot from the Windows NTFS partition, and I was having a lot of problems. Turned out that in my menu.lst file, I was typing my paths in lower case, but some of the directories had upper case letters. Working from within Windows, I was thinking that typing with everything in lower case would work, but I guess that GRUB is kind of fussy about case sensitivity.

BTW, here's the wiki article if it helps. Markus was kind enough to convert it to the new format.

jd

[j2m2t2]

I am running windows 2000 on my Dell laptop. Here are the steps I took after downloading grubd.zip

-To boot a knoppix 3.6 or 3.7 ISO image from the Hard Drive using USB key or boot menu on CPU:

1st. Put the ISO image in the root directory of your CPU, hopefully partition 1.

-USB Key:
1. Format the USB Key using the HP USB Key utility HPUSBFW.EXE in the folder Root_of_USB. Select FAT and make it bootable by selecting the create a DOS startup disk, use the files located in the folder Root_of_USB.

2. Copy the contents of the Root_of_USB folder (except the HPUSB utilty) to the root of the USB Key, say no to overwrite files.

3. Copy the contents of the Knoppix.37 folder for version 3.7 or Knoppix.36 folder for version 3.6 located at Root_of_NTFS\BOOT\ to the root of the USB key

4. On the root of the USB key is a file called menu.lst, you can edit this file to change your home directory, config, etc. You may also have to change the reference to HDA1 if your ISO image is on partition 2 instead of 1.

-CPU boot menu:
Did not try yet.

Happy New Year

[Aaron]

As a linux newbie, I just want to thank everyone for their efforts here.

ruymbeke, your explanations and persistant file updates made this a very easy install....Thank You


Now to start learning.....think I need to start with the persistant home/settings.

[Alterscape]

Afterscape, be sure to check the paths closely in your menu.lst. Just recently, I had occasion to go through this when bfree wrote a script to allow Kanotix to boot from the Windows NTFS partition, and I was having a lot of problems. Turned out that in my menu.lst file, I was typing my paths in lower case, but some of the directories had upper case letters. Working from within Windows, I was thinking that typing with everything in lower case would work, but I guess that GRUB is kind of fussy about case sensitivity.

BTW, here's the wiki article if it helps. Markus was kind enough to convert it to the new format.

jd

JD, thanks for the link, although this discusses an install to an NTFS partition -- I have an ext3 partition and Knoppix installed, debian-style.

I should clarify that my "error" error message appears immediately when I select the Grbldr option from my NT bootloader. Grub does not load, I do not pass go, I do not collect $200, etc. Would a problem in menu.lst cause this error message? It was my understanding that menu.lst merely provides a list of options for the GRUB menu -- would an error in capitalization in menu.lst actually prevent GRUB from loading? I'd expect a problem like that to manifest after selecting an option from within GRUB.

[ruymbeke]

I should clarify that my "error" error message appears immediately when I select the Grbldr option from my NT bootloader. Grub does not load, I do not pass go, I do not collect $200, etc. Would a problem in menu.lst cause this error message? It was my understanding that menu.lst merely provides a list of options for the GRUB menu -- would an error in capitalization in menu.lst actually prevent GRUB from loading? I'd expect a problem like that to manifest after selecting an option from within GRUB.

You are correct. menu.lst is only used once grub is loaded, and in your case it looks like that grub do not start properly. To be honest I never tried to call my XP boot partition anything but c: (you use h: ) and that may be the problem. Since I don't have such a setup, could you please try to:
1) edit your boot.ini to use grldr and bootgrub from both partitions c: and h: (5 boot options including your XP)
2) put the same grldr, bootgrub and boot.ini in both partitions c: and h:
3) try all the 4 options and report the errors
Thank you, Gilles

[siveys]

I have just started tinkering with Knoppix a couple of days earlier and I did not find this thread before so I ended up doing basically the same thing you suggest here on my own using wingrub and files in knoppix 3.7 iso. I can't bother with reading all the 18 pages in this thread so I write this to give you a "fresh view" on how to get knoppix 3.7 iso-file booting from a ntfs partition using grub via XP bootloader (no partition resizing, no external boot media, no overwriting the mbr).

1. Download Knoppix 3.7 iso and place it to C:\knoppix\knoppix37.iso
2. Mount the iso with your favourite iso mounter utility, for example DAEMON Tools
3. Copy linux26 and minirt26.gz from F:\boot\isolinux\ (the mounted iso) and place them to C:\knoppix\
4. Download and install WINGRUB from SourceForge
5. Run WinGrub and install bootloader to boot.ini in drive C:
6. Move the directory C:\Grub to C:\boot\Grub to avoid wingrub stalling on boot
7. Edit C:\boot\Grub\MENU.LST to contain only the following:

timeout=1
default=0
title Knoppix 3.7
kernel (hd0,0)/knoppix/linux26 ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init lang=us apm=power-off vga=791 nomce quiet bootfrom=/dev/hda1/knoppix/knoppix37.iso
initrd (hd0,0)/knoppix/minirt26.gz

8. Boot

This was actually very easy when compared to the first route I took, which was to repartition the ntfs-drive with burnt knoppix, copy the necessary files to an ext2 partition and install a fresh lilo to dual boot between XP and knoppix - which actuallty worked in the end, but caused some gray hair especially when qtparted, after resizing the partition correctly, messed up the partition table so that it hung up on itself when trying to reread it..

What is notable here is that at least with the recent knoppix 3.7 you don't need special nfts enabled minirt files but the ones supplied within Knoppix cd work fine.

[ruymbeke]

You can read some documentation which summarize this thread here

...What is notable here is that at least with the recent knoppix 3.7 you don't need special nfts enabled minirt files but the ones supplied within Knoppix cd work fine.

I did not try Wingrub to install Grub4Dos but it looks like a good idea to provide a GUI. I personally prefer to edit the boot.ini and copy a couple of files in the root of my partition so there is nothing hidden or magic and it is very easy to understand how to remove everything. BTW tinybit/gandalf author of wingrub and grub4dos is one of the guys to really thank because he/they wrote some of the grub patches I have been using.

I am glad to see that you got it working with the minirt supplied within the Knoppix iso file, but it didn't work for me. This is the reason why I had to modify the minirt file to add the ntfs drivers and modify the linuxrc script file. I maybe did something wrong. Which 3.7 version of knoppix did you use ? The one I tried has this md5: a98fb9823414dc3d33c5e53f120c0339 *KNOPPIX_V3.7-2004-12-08-EN.iso
PS: you can also use Isobuster to access the content of the iso file.

[siveys]

I checked that I was using the same version as you had and I checked the boot process to confirm my root was mounted from the iso loop. Both of these held true so I started wondering why you didn't get it to work and checked my minirt26, which did not contain the ntfs modules - so they must be compiled into the kernel i thought - until I found out that that the cloop filesystem DOES contain the ntfs module. I was quite puzzled for a while since it was obivous I should not have been able to use the iso but then I noticed that upon booting knoppix tells me that it is searching for the knoppix filesystem first from hda2, which was the remainder of my previous tohd installation. I then renamed the KNOPPIX directory there and tried to boot again to find that it did not boot anymore. I didn't get into the details of linuxrc but somehow it must first mount the filesystem from hda2 to find the ntfs module, and then use it to load the iso from the ntfs partition.. Huh.. Some magic I'd say So the files you posted still seem to be the way to purely boot from ntfs. I hope this issue will be fixed in upcoming releases since it is not very hard to fix and would make maintaining instructions for this method a lot less painfull..

About the wingrub gui.. In my opinnion the it was overly complex and thus probably not a very good option if you are writing a howto. A tiny program or a script bundled with a zip containing the necessary file structure would be much better if you wanted a really easy installation. Mos people probably just want it to work and there are many other (probably better) places to uncover that magic than reading such a script. Thus I'd probably write the script as small and as possible, include only the 2.6 kernel and a query for a) language and b) knoppix iso location. The procedure itself, when loading grub from boot.ini, is completely non-destructive so it would be possible to ship an official "windows installer" for poor mans HD-knoppix, which would probably be the preferred method for many users to try knoppix. It is still anyway quite a hassle to burn the CD for most people.

I'm personally not so accustomed to Windows programming and the only way I could write this kind of stuff would be to write a perl script and bundle it with par, which results in an executable that is initially something like 2 mb for a "hello world"-program I also don't use knoppix very regularily so I'll take my burdens of maintaining somewhere where I have a bit more itches to scratch

Thanks for your time and efforts - my short visit to the knoppix land was very pleasant.

[bfree]

I didn't get into the details of linuxrc but somehow it must first mount the filesystem from hda2 to find the ntfs module, and then use it to load the iso from the ntfs partition.. Huh.. Some magic I'd say

Yep you've got it in one, bootfrom requires you to have another cloop file available regularly not only for the ntfs module but also for the loop module and a mount capable of loading it. I wrote a patch for the linuxrc of Kanotix which was accepted and provides a fromiso cheatcode with no such limitation. I have also written a patch for Knoppix, but unfortunately the Knoppix minirt requires far more changes then just the linuxrc patch (it also needs the loop module and a losetup and if you want it to work on ntfs it also needs the ntfs module and if you want it to work nicely on ntfs or fat it also needs a better mount). If you can find an archive of the knoppix developers mailing list you can find the latest patch I wrote for Knoppix (though it needs an adjustment to use the replaced mount correctly if you add an extra mount program to get the full ntfs/fat support).

[omnix99]

Afterscape, be sure to check the paths closely in your menu.lst. Just recently, I had occasion to go through this when bfree wrote a script to allow Kanotix to boot from the Windows NTFS partition, and I was having a lot of problems. Turned out that in my menu.lst file, I was typing my paths in lower case, but some of the directories had upper case letters. Working from within Windows, I was thinking that typing with everything in lower case would work, but I guess that GRUB is kind of fussy about case sensitivity.

BTW, here's the wiki article if it helps. Markus was kind enough to convert it to the new format.

jd

JD, thanks for the link, although this discusses an install to an NTFS partition -- I have an ext3 partition and Knoppix installed, debian-style.

I should clarify that my "error" error message appears immediately when I select the Grbldr option from my NT bootloader. Grub does not load, I do not pass go, I do not collect $200, etc. Would a problem in menu.lst cause this error message? It was my understanding that menu.lst merely provides a list of options for the GRUB menu -- would an error in capitalization in menu.lst actually prevent GRUB from loading? I'd expect a problem like that to manifest after selecting an option from within GRUB.

Did you ever find a solution to this problem, Alterscape?