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

[John Hart]

I have successfully booted from an ISO file on my ntfs drive. At the Knoppix boot prompt I types "knoppix bootfrom=/dev/sda1/K.iso" where sda1 was the
hard drive designator as seen by Knoppix and K.iso was the name of the ISO file . Not sure if a wild card will work.

[johnrw]

Gilles,

It works great! Firstly I told vmWare Player to use an existing VM.
Then all I did was to tell vmWare Player where the Knoppix ISO file was... in Settings.
Viola!. Knoppix that has NTFS support built in.

When I looked into the menu.lst on sda1... so I could add the "home=scan"... I found a parameter I don't understand.
"data=ramdisk"

What I was hoping to do was to add a new disk to the VM... and put a knoppix.img persistent home on it...
I did manage to get that created... and it showed up as /dev/sdb

Something did crop up... the screensaver... it goes straight to it after X finishes loading.
Data persistence would help that out.

But I am using vmware player 3.1.5 build-491717... because ver 4 needs better hardware than my laptop I have at home. (I'm never there!)

Thank You

[ruymbeke]

Hello,
Please find below the links to the improved minirt init boot for Knoppix 7.0.0 (Magazine release):
(please do not just left click but use the "save as" right click option to save it)
http://s94002264.onlinehome.us/grub/k700/minirt_700a.gz
http://s94002264.onlinehome.us/grub/...minirt_700a.gz
and a minimal virtual machine using the latest vmware tools from their current beta
(as the official released tools do not work with the new kernel used in Knoppix 7.0):
http://s94002264.onlinehome.us/grub/vmk700_646643.zip
Please provide some feedback...
Hope this helps.
Best Regards,
Gilles

[ruymbeke]

Hello,
For those who are interested in 3D acceleration when running Knoppix 7.0 as a Vmware guest
since Linux guest graphics are currently very badly supported by Vmware (they are working on it):
as an example, a compile (as the Linux kernel) can take up to twice the time in a single cpu config
depending on the Linux console window size as half of the cpu time is used for the window scrolling !
So I played with the 3D acceleration of the Knoopix 7.0 guest in the beta VmWare Workstation
and I got it working more or less after adding few very new packages: mesa, vmwgfx, ...
This is obviously an experimental preview and is not recommended for normal use.
Please find below as info the script I used. Hope this helps.
Best Regards,
Gilles

#! /bin/sh (to be used as root)
# Inspired from: http://www.mesa3d.org/vmware-guest.html

apt-get update
apt-get -y -t experimental --reinstall install git-core xutils-dev
apt-get -y -t experimental --reinstall install automake libtool libpthread-stubs0-dev
apt-get -y -t experimental --reinstall install xserver-xorg-dev x11proto-xinerama-dev
apt-get -y -t experimental --reinstall install libgl1-mesa-dri libxcb-glx0-dev

git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/xorg/driver/xf86-video-vmware
pushd xf86-video-vmware
make clean
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr #--libdir=/usr/lib64
make -j4
make install
popd

rm -f /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/vmwgfx.ko*
git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/mesa/vmwgfx
pushd vmwgfx
make clean
make -j4
make install
busybox cp -f 00-vmwgfx.rules /etc/udev/rules.d
depmod -a -ae
depmod -a #-ae
popd
rmmod vmw_balloon
rmmod vmwgfx
modprobe vmwgfx

dmesg | grep vmwgfx
glxinfo | grep Open | grep VM
glxinfo | grep Open | grep Mesa

echo Please type "init 5" to restart X
init 3

[ruymbeke]

Hello,
Please find below the links to the improved minirt init boot for Knoppix 7.0.2
(please do not just left click but use the "save as" right click option to save it)
http://s94002264.onlinehome.us/grub/k702/minirt_702a.gz
It includes both the 32 and 64 bits Linux kernel modules and use them accordingly.
I could not get the vmware tools to work properly yet and I am still working on it.
Please provide some feedback...
Hope this helps.
Best Regards,
Gilles

[ruymbeke]

johnrw wrote:

When I looked into the menu.lst on sda1... so I could add the "home=scan"...
I found a parameter I don't understand: "data=ramdisk"

Hi John,
Sorry for the delay in my response, I did not notice your question until now... Good catch !
I have to admit that you are the first one to have noticed this and I am glad that you asked what it is used for.
The "data=ramdisk" linux kernel parameter is to setup the "after boot" data persistence into a separate ramdisk "/mnt/data"
which is different from the original ramdisk "/ramdisk" which now only contains the modified data from the boot process,
mainly resulting from the hardware auto-detection. The goal of this way to handle the data persistence is double:
First it allows to use a disk partition as a whole (instead of a file within a shared partition) allowing for much faster access
and bandwidth by using something like "data=sdb1". Just be aware that the data in that "sdb1" partition will be overwritten.
Then this is also an attempt to only have the persistence of the data that matters and keep the hardware specific data
out of it allowing for an easy migration of a customized setup (with valuable data persistence but not boot persistence)
to another hardware without loosing the great Knoppix hardware auto detection benefits. This is especially handy when
you have this setup on a USB dongle that you use to run on multiple and different hardware.
I hope that my explanations are clear enough for you to understand...
Best Regards,
Gilles

[russed]

I successfully booted Knoppix 6.7 from its .iso image file in an usb flash drive, following guidelines from some thread somewhere in the forums of this website, using Grub as boot manager, with this entry in menu.lst:

title Knoppix 6.7
ls /KNOPPIX_V6.7.1CD-2011-09-14-EN.iso > nul || find --set-root --devices=hf /iso/KNOPPIX_V6.7.1CD-2011-09-14-EN.iso
map /KNOPPIX_V6.7.1CD-2011-09-14-EN.iso (0xff)
map --hook
root (0xff)
kernel /boot/isolinux/linux ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init apm=power-off vga=791 nomce lang=es keyboard=es xkeyboard=es BOOT_IMAGE=knoppix bootfrom=/.//KNOPPIX_V6.7.1CD-2011-09-14-EN.iso noprompt
initrd /boot/isolinux/minirt.gz
boot

This also would work in order to boot the same .iso image file in a NTFS partition in the hard disk, using grub as boot manager. In fact, I use something alike to do it.

[ruymbeke]

Hi russed,
Good idea, I use grub a lot like you to boot some small iso and where the speed is not an issue.
But if I remember this right, th cd/DVD emulation done by grub uses heavily the the bios for disk accesses
which is quite slow and may create problems on older systems with large disk sizes (especially if the iso
is located at the end of the disk) I am also not sure how the Linux kernel handle shared data (or can coexist)
with the grub/bios routines. For this reason I much prefer to rely only on the Linux kernel and only
use grub for the bootstrap. That being said, I am glad that this option works for you.
My two cents,
Gilles

[ruymbeke]

Hello,
Please find below the link to a minimal virtual machine using the latest vmware tools 8.0.3
http://s94002264.onlinehome.us/grub/vmk702_703057.zip
Please provide some feedback...
Hope this helps.
Best Regards,
Gilles

[ruymbeke]

Hello,
Please find below the link to a zip file which contains everything you need to
patch Knoppix 7.0.2 live at boot time and add the missing ntfs 3g support:
http://s94002264.onlinehome.us/grub/k702_ntfs_3g.zip (20MB)
This technique can also be used to live patch Knoppix with whatever other feature you may need.
I am using this method on a ntfs formatted bootable USB dongle (for Windows compatibility)
and it only requires a couple files to be located at the right place (matching the grub menu.lst)
Among them are the knoppix 7.0.2 iso file and the "ntfs" cloop patch. You can use bootlace.com
(which runs as both a dos and Linux executable) to make your media storage device bootable:
./bootlace.com --time-out=0 /dev/sda (be sure to use the proper boot device, here it is sda)
You also need to have grldr (grub binary) in the root of your boot device so it can be found
by the bootsector executable (installed by bootlace). The knoppix.sh script needs to be next to
(same folder as) the Knoppix iso and "ntfs" patch files. You need to use the slightly customized
minirt_702a.gz init ramdisk. The also included two Linux Kernels are unchanged from the 7.0.2 DVD.
Hope this helps. Please provide some feedback...
Best Regards,
Gilles

PS: Please find below the direct link to the ntfs patch file: (2.3MB)
http://s94002264.onlinehome.us/grub/k702/ntfs