Frugal install with UEFI on a USB stick

[libertas]

Hi,

I could boot the ISO from the Ventoy USB stick in a desktop computer.
I'd like to install FD901 to another USB stick so that I could use it in two computers.

From the Fatdog64 Control Panel | Install | UEFI installer 0.2:
The target USB stick already has three partitions with a couple of Puppies I am trying, too.
- a 256MB FAT for UEFI
- a 20GB ext4 for the puppies/FD images
- a 39GB ext4 for saving sessions

When choosing that UEFI installer 0.2 it asks which of the target partitions to install to.
I choose the second (20GB).
Next.
The installer says that:
"sdi2 is not a FAT partition. UEFI needs to be installed in a FAT partition.
Please choose to install in a new partition or quit this installer, re-format your sdi2 and re-run this installer again."

Well, but is it installing the system or the boot part of it? Don't understand.

If I choose the first partition (256MB) it says that it only has 241MB. You need at least 1024.
Please choose another device.

So, it is really trying to install the system, not the uefi boot part.

It seems that something is wrong here.
It should install to the second partition formatted as ext4 and afterwards configure the uefi part in the first partition.
Or is there something that I'm missing?

[jamesbond]

The UEFI installer expects an empty flash drive, it wants to copy both UEFI files and the Fatdog64 files.

Since your flash drive already has UEFI bootloader, you don't need this part. Just copy vmlinuz and initrd from Fatdog64's ISO to your second partition (under a folder if you want to), and create a new entry in refind.conf and/or grub.cfg to boot that.

[libertas]

Hi @jamesbond ,

So, this seems to be in contrast with what happens with puppies that encourage side-by-side installations of several of them.

Any reason for FatDog not to want this kind of promiscuosity?

[jamesbond]

Fatdog co-exists with other puppies perfectly fine.

But Fatdog installers won't do that for you. They won't install to places that already have existing bootloaders, as we consider mucking around with existing bootloader configurations to be very risky. As one simple mishap can corrupt it and the entire system (or USB stick) will become unbootable.

If you already have an existing bootloader, we assume that you are an advanced user who knows what they're doing and that you know how to create a new boot stanza. After all, to install Fatdog you only need to copy two files: vmlinuz, and initrd. Nothing else.

But if the assumption is wrong and you're stuck, you can post in the forum and ask for guidance. You don't have to necessarily post the questions in the Fatdog forum (which can be quiet sometimes); bootloader questions are common and usually not specific for a particular distros. Many others can help you in this particular aspect.

[libertas]

Yes, it's indeed risky to deal with bootloaders.

Thank you for the explanation jamesbond.