Moderator: Forum moderators
Puppy users who are interested in the next generation of the venerable ISObooter tool (downloaded 5000 times in the old forum) can find it here:
Board Index > Dog House > Debian-Live Starter Kit > Debian Live Daedalus Starter Kit > 2nd post -> The Debian-Live Multi Installer v5 and ISObooter3
viewtopic.php?p=94590#p94590
I strongly suggest, you put into this topic, whatever it is you want it to provide.
A little info on what ISObooter is.
Just putting a link, to a post in another topic, is not a good idea.
These links can go bad.
Forum Global Moderator
The things you do not tell us, are usually the clue to fixing the problem.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be older.
This is not what I expected 
bigpup wrote:Just putting a link, to a post in another topic, is not a good idea.
These links can go bad.
How could an internal link (to a post in this forum, by the same poster) go bad ?
The link might not go bad, but some users (especially MYSELF) rarely follow links to sites without some clue as to WHAT
it is about! I've asked other users to refrain from this lazy methodology of posting. Besides, why open a new topic
that only links to an old topic with deleted posts, etc. Just sayin', this posting only a link with absolutely NO information
is what spammers do, or they disguise their spam links in unrelated words. IF this forum did have some automated spam
filtering, this sort of posting would more likely as not trigger the filter, resulting in a removed post and probably a
pissed off poster!
Wiz
Signature available upon request
A descriptive piece of text before any provided link is a good policy, though it could be argued that the thread title indicated pretty clearly what the link was for in this case?
Certainly, the thread is now useless without the link being provided and it did serve a useful purpose since it will become difficult to find whatever the link pointed to buried in the growing and huge Buster Starter Thread.
Links which point to actual resources being provided freely by a contributor to the community should never be deleted by anyone else! That's my opinion.
https://www.tinylinux.info/
DOWNLOAD wd_multi for hundreds of 'distros' at your fingertips: viewtopic.php?p=99154#p99154
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No. Not at all.
I came here and the link is gone. What now? No one could get it together and edit in a one line description for the link??? make everyone happy????
SOMEBODY FIX IT or do I have to track it down....again....and return A LINK to it right here?
Best IMO would be if something like below is in the first post, but let's not make too much trouble about this.
Here's the link to the ISObooter post in the Bullseye Starter Kit thread: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic. ... 176#p65176
Description (exactly copied):
This is ISObooter modified to also work with UEFI. The original instructions are here.
1. Format your USB drive with two partitions - fat32 and ext4. Flag the fat32 partition as bootable.
2. Get the UEFI package from here. Extract it to the fat32 partition of the USB drive. It contains an EFI folder and a .cer file.
3. Get the ISObooter script from below. Extract it to the fat32 partition.
4. Copy some ISO's to the fat32 partition. Run the "sync" command after each ISO.
5. Click the ISObooter script.
6. When setting up the UEFI boot menu, you must identify "Old" and "New" Puppies. New Puppies like fossa recognize the "find_iso" boot argument and work automatically. For old Puppies like bionic you must open their ISO and copy the SFS files into a folder on the ext4 partition named PuppySFS.
7. Boot off the USB drive.
8. You can also use the Deblive Multi Installer to put some installs in sdb2. Collect their GRUB2 menu entries in a "grubmenu.txt" file and copy it to the EFI/grub folder in sdb1. It will be included in the UEFI boot menu.
--------------------------
Here is a GRUB2 menu entry that boots Fatdog directly from its ISO file:
Code: Select all
menuentry "Fatdog64-812 ISO boot" {
echo "Booting Fatdog64-812 ..."
set isopath="/Fatdog64-812.iso"
search --no-floppy --file --set=root $isopath
loopback loop $isopath
set root=(loop)
linux (loop)/vmlinuz
initrd (loop)/initrd
}------------------------
Because anything can happen with computer data!
Nothing is 100% perfect all the time!
You do understand that this forum is located on someone else's computer?
A big huge data server.
That hopefully keeps good backups! 
Forum Global Moderator
The things you do not tell us, are usually the clue to fixing the problem.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be older.
This is not what I expected
But linking cannot always or even often be avoided. A post of particularly written for Bullseye Starter Kit happens to be of relevance elsewhere, so the only tidy way to point to the same information is via a link. That facility is needed all the time and we do have to rely on the links remaining valid, though, this being a forum and not a carefully maintained Wiki means the mechanism isn't perfect, but that goes for everything about the forum as a kind of huge technical database.
https://www.tinylinux.info/
DOWNLOAD wd_multi for hundreds of 'distros' at your fingertips: viewtopic.php?p=99154#p99154
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No, not at all 
How are you thinking, a topic just posted, is going to have the same hits, as the one in the old forum, that is 12+ years old.
This forum has a lot of new people as members.
This is not the same old group of members all from the old Murga Puppy forum.
I was going to try using ISObooter!
But now, i am not going to, because if I had any questions or found something not working, for me.
Your attitude, gives me the feeling, I would be out of luck, getting any help. 
10 download hits, in two days, is not a bad hit rate, for this forum.
Forum Global Moderator
The things you do not tell us, are usually the clue to fixing the problem.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be older.
This is not what I expected
bigpup wrote:That hopefully keeps good backups!
We just uploaded complete backups for the forum(s) to all points on the globe just in case.
From an earlier post
... Here is a GRUB2 menu entry that boots Fatdog directly from its ISO file:...
FATDOG is one of the few forum distros which will boot from its ISO file in either Ventoy, SG2D, or ISObooter without the need to modify the stanza(s). Each of these 3 methods of maintaining ISO files and presenting selections to the user for booting has their own advantages and disadvantages.
I hope the forum continues to push for these methods as it would/could/should cut down on ALL of the issues PUP users get themselves into. The experienced one of the community DONT see this as a problem but in my couple years of following boot issues with all the frugal attempts demonstrates that booting from ISO files reduces headaches without introducing headaches. This reduces forum boot support requirements allowing membership to focus on the operational issues of PUP/DOGs versus a need to address common boot issues arising from frugal attempts. ISO file booting via one of the 3 mentioned solutions, simplifies frugal operations and reduces common re-occurring issues that we continue to see.
Of course, I know many already know this fact.
As WoofCE development continues I foresee these 3 methods reducing to one for current-future PUPs. And the issue of 'missing' PUP...SFS at boot time continues to diminish with developer understanding.
Clarity wrote: ↑Fri Aug 26, 2022 6:18 amFATDOG is one of the few forum distros which will boot from its ISO file in either Ventoy, SG2D, or ISObooter without the need to modify the stanza(s). Each of these 3 methods of maintaining ISO files and presenting selections to the user for booting has their own advantages and disadvantages.
I hope the forum continues to push for these methods as it would/could/should cut down on ALL of the issues PUP users get themselves into. The experienced one of the community DONT see this as a problem but in my couple years of following boot issues with all the frugal attempts demonstrates that booting from ISO files reduces headaches without introducing headaches. This reduces forum boot support requirements allowing membership to focus on the operational issues of PUP/DOGs versus a need to address common boot issues arising from frugal attempts. ISO file booting via one of the 3 mentioned solutions, simplifies frugal operations and reduces common re-occurring issues that we continue to see.
To be frank, Clarity, I completely disagree with your above statement regarding 'simplifies frugal operations and reduces common re-occurring issues that we continue to see'.
In my experience, trying to cater for all of the likes of Ventoy, SG2D, and, to a lesser extent, ISObooter, complicates by a mile the work of the developer and thus holds back more important boot development work.
The flexibility of a frugal install (no matter how it is implemented) comes from a setting-up-layers init script (usually part of an initramfs, but not always). All of Ventoy, SG2D, and ISObooter can and usually do require different handling code to be crafted into that (usually inside initrd) init script - often greatly complicating what is already a tricky to design flexible, featureful, frugal install file-system layering facility.
Since different distros use different grub-related kernel arguments to specify different features and facilities (inevitably different because of often different ways of doing things) there really is no simplification of boot that comes from booting directly from ISO - not if you want to use the different save persistence mechanisms each distro offers differently. Rather, by demanding support for such a variety of iso-boot mechanisms, assuming the initrd/init developer attempts to meet these demands, the result is added complexity (I would say dangerous bloat) to the init boot code. If we all agreed to stop using iso format for distros, that design complexity would vanish - better designs would more easily and likely result since developers would then have time to concentrate on improved flexible frugal install features rather than spent so much effort trying to make any existing or new features also work with any of these (and newer) boot-from-iso methodologies.
ISObooter is the best of the bunch because it closely reflects the mechanisms directly provided by grub for booting isos, so if it was agreed to support that one mechanism I'd be happy with that.
Both SG2D and Ventoy have their own unique needs to make them work (more complicated still if you want reliable flexible save persistence mechanisms working), and if someone else designs yet another iso-boot methodology, even more time is going to be wasted trying to make our individual distro designs work with that too! We don't need them - and that is the key point.
'Normal' extract squashed/image files from compressed distro format (be that iso or say tar.X or whatever...) put into own folder for bootloader to access is simple and understood and simple (and as weedogit type script shows, can be automated to a large extent - and could be automated more...). We don't need any iso boot mechanism (aside from what the likes of grub2 already provides), and personally I only reluctantly support either or SG2D or Ventoy etc... and hope one day to not support such complex-to-cater-for/unneeded approaches at all. Freed from that pain will allow more time to concentrate on better overall distro designs (including more flexible boot components, and no, I do not consider ability to boot via SG2D or Ventoy an advantage in terms of flexibility - neither add anything to save layer persistence flexibility/facilites at all).
I don't mind the iso file format as a means of 'distro distribution' (since we have tools that easily open/mount iso's read-only for the sake of content extraction), but booting from them is an unnecessary, pointless, time and effort-wasting complexity (was different when DVDs and CDs was a common boot device media). Indeed I may eventually abandon all personal support for that archaic mechanism altogether since normal frugal installation is easier and much more flexible generally (whether from SSD, spinning hard drives, usb sticks or whatever), and especially when save persistence flexibility is also required.
So I'm fine with the long-existence of ISObooter, which as a utility system simplifies the underlying grub-related/provided mechanisms. But Ventoy and SG2D should be thrown in the trash can - or support them yourself (which will include becoming an expert with initram filesystems and modifying each and all of these for all the distros you want to boot!). But just to clear up any confusion - I am not simply writing my opinion from the perspective of development/boot-components; I use computers!!! and traditional frugal installation is superior overall to iso-boot for me - I do not want to STRUGGLE trying to achieve some of the save persistence tricks I enjoy and as a user that pain becomes necessary anytime I use the likes of SG2D and Ventoy... Why bother using these is what I wonder - they add nothing meaningful that cannot be done better via traditional frugal install approach, so they should be regarded as redundant and certainly unnecessary.
https://www.tinylinux.info/
DOWNLOAD wd_multi for hundreds of 'distros' at your fingertips: viewtopic.php?p=99154#p99154
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Link removed.
Puppy users who are interested in the next generation of the venerable ISObooter tool (downloaded 5000 times in the old forum) can find it themselves in the Bullseye Starter Kit thread.
Happy now?
@rcrsn51
Is this really what you want someone to see when they open this topic? Really?
This as the first post
Forum Global Moderator
The things you do not tell us, are usually the clue to fixing the problem.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be older.
This is not what I expected
Firstly, I want to acknowledge what you share and I do understand the dilemma you are presenting. Thus, I agree for the most part. But I see something, not from a developer's view, but from a user view where things are done with little thought in getting to a desktop.
I may be missing something, but if I remember, correctly, PUP's WoofCE development for system init processing or shutdown processing has not changed. Nor have I witnessed a change by the DOGs of the forum.
The ONLY visible change I have seen from them, is the ability, like Ubuntu and other mainline distros, to merely allow discovery by SG2D for presentation to the user. To date, this is available across the board for all forum distros except 2 (which by their admission are experimental).
There has been no change to facilitate presentation for booting in ISObooter nor Ventoy accommodations. Those ISO-file presenters make no demand on the distro developer for presenting the distro nor presenting the developer's Boot Stanzas. The PCs boot bare-metal via their GRUB boot stanzas with no actual demand or request for development interaction.
That is what these ISO file presenter do...nothing more is their intent. Just to facilitate a simple method of getting the PUP listed in front of the user so one can select and boot whichever he, the user, has added to the presenter's folder.
By not needing any consideration for presenting the developer's distro, I dont see any harm or impact on the developers for getting their distro in front of anyone via a direct boot of their distro's delivered file, any more so than booting their distro expanded onto disk/disc.
Ventoy, is the newest of these distro presentation products for user selection and has gone one further than the other 2: If allows 2 features useful for users
It allows IMG file booting
it allows ISO files to be placed on system drives rather than its old requirement of keeping the ISO/IMG files ONLY on USB.
I am NOT advocating for development community change in product design. NO I am advocating for simple steps that allows new/experienced users to get a running desktop with as little effort as possible. ... AND WITH NO DEVELOPMENT CONCERNS! These presenters job is merely to present the distro for selection and afford the launch by the user. ISObooter/SG2D/Ventoy intends to do these with NO developer concern.
These 3 method and QEMU have allowed users to do such with ISO files and IMG files.
As I have said before, experienced forum users usually understand who to expand delivery contents to be placed in the filesystems prior to actual booting and use of the distro. They may not use these. Tire-kicker and those new to Puppyland would see some benefit and reduction in potential headaches, otherwise. You and all of the moderators know how to do these expansions.
Again, I am looking at ease of use via a method of selecting the distro developer's presentation without much need for any understanding other than a mere "Download and Boot" option; as the current PUP-DOG distros are currently designed. Further, these products are not limited to just PUPs, as they offer the ability for user selections of ANY bootable distro or OS these products list for user selections. Thus, I see benefit with no demand on development for any development changes or changes to any installed OS that are present on the system's drive(s).
AGAIN, I am sure this is apparent, BUT, I make no demands of developers or community to support either of these "DISTRO Presenter Products". They, I feel, exist to facilitate users to download and boot, directly and easily.
bigpup wrote: ↑Sat Aug 27, 2022 4:33 pmLink removed.
Puppy users who are interested in the next generation of the venerable ISObooter tool (downloaded 5000 times in the old forum) can find it themselves in the Bullseye Starter Kit thread.
Happy now?
@rcrsn51
Is this really what you want someone to see when they open this topic? Really?This as the first post
IMO it wasn't necessary to criticise about the link in the first post.
As @rcrsn51's project is the "Debian-Live Bullseye Starter Kit" he's posting most of his applications / how-to's there.
I guess he may have thought about Puppy users too (as the program works for Puppy also) and posted a link in a new topic at How-To section (so... best intention IMO).
Please be honest... would you have criticised it also if it would have been the other way around ?
(I mean if the main ISObooter topic was in the How-To section and the link to that was posted in the "Debian-Live Bullseye Starter Kit").
There is a big difference, from just posting a link in another post, to something, and making a topic, where the first post in the topic, gives no information, nothing!!
Several posts in this topic have stated the reason.
As this topic is now posted in the first post.
The topic is telling no one how to do anything.
Not even what isobooter is!
Now it does not even have the link.
rcrsn51 has control of the first post of this topic.
Because of this:
this posting only a link with absolutely NO information,
is what spammers do, or they disguise their spam links in unrelated words. IF this forum did have some automated spam
filtering, this sort of posting would more likely as not trigger the filter, resulting in a removed post and probably a
pissed off poster!
I was suppose to delete this topic, if all it had was a link and nothing else!
Forum Global Moderator
The things you do not tell us, are usually the clue to fixing the problem.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be older.
This is not what I expected
bigpup wrote:Because of this:
this posting only a link with absolutely NO information,
is what spammers do, or they disguise their spam links in unrelated words. IF this forum did have some automated spam
filtering, this sort of posting would more likely as not trigger the filter, resulting in a removed post and probably a
pissed off poster!
Just clicking the link was showing the information.
IF this forum did have some automated spam
filtering.
Ok, IF, but the forum does not have automated spam filtering.
I believe that most of us know that @rcrsn51 is not a spammer.
I believe that most of us know that @rcrsn51 is not a spammer.
That is why I did not just delete the topic, when all I saw was just a link.
@fredx181
If you want to keep talking about this.
Post a topic in the:
Board index -> Off-Topic Area -> Admin's and Moderators
You should have access to that section of the forum.
Forum Global Moderator
The things you do not tell us, are usually the clue to fixing the problem.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be older.
This is not what I expected
bigpup wrote:That is why I did not just delete the topic, when all I saw was just a link.
If that's a general policy for this kind of situations, I must say that I don't agree with it.
Leave the links and topic if one knows the user who posted it and has been here for years.
Hopefully there will at least a bit explaining what I'm linking to either in the subject line or in a post body.
Delete spam and not useful information. End of discussion.
Seems to me the response to the first post could gave been worded in a courteous manner, if more information was requested. Something like "Thanks RC, but I'm unfamiliar with it, could you provide a little more information about what Isobooter is?"
It's important to understand we are a community. If we lose that understanding, we aren't. And then what's the point of participating, developing, speaking, continuing?
Every person contributes something, big or little. Irritation is not a contribution. It's anti-contribution.
HP Envy Laptop 17t-cr100
Fossapup F-96 CE rev 4
Huge kernel: huge-6.1.8-fossapup64
My homemade foam boat:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sDubB0-REg
Meanwhile, not a single community member who downloaded ISObooter has shown the courtesy to report if the new version works for them.
That is par for the course quite often. I have had 101 downloads of pupit.sh and no one has ever commented one way or the other about it 
I presume it must work or be useful to some, or the opposite...-> proved to be a worthless download. What does it matter?
I release weedogit.sh so often the download counter falls to zero everytime I do that. But overall it has had literally many hundreds of downloads in its relatively short life, albeit probably often by the same multi-dozen people, but maybe only around half a dozen who ever downloaded it ever reported back about it at all (was useful sometimes the ones who did admittedly). I really don't find open source community is a place to regularly get much feedback, and certainly not much in proportion to the number of downloads that may occur. I tend to take the number of downloads as the feedback... If something keeps getting downloaded it must be proving useful to somebody (maybe...) - not a perfect situation in terms of encouraging further development, but that is just how it is. To be fair, no one asked me to upload anything I developed and use myself anyway, so only reason they should consider giving feedback is that it makes further development much more likely - and especially development that may address any extras/fixes they might like to see happen. If you need feedback as a condition of contributing something for potential use, and you don't get it, you should consider not uploading at all (rather than withdrawing what was already posted?).
https://www.tinylinux.info/
DOWNLOAD wd_multi for hundreds of 'distros' at your fingertips: viewtopic.php?p=99154#p99154
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It does make one think twice whether one should make the effort to share something in the future though. No feedback probably means that it is working. Users are more likely to complain if something is not working, I think (although some will just not bother if it's not working and report nothing).
I will make a bigger effort to thank those who provide their work here, and provide feedback on how well it works for me.
HP Envy Laptop 17t-cr100
Fossapup F-96 CE rev 4
Huge kernel: huge-6.1.8-fossapup64
My homemade foam boat:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sDubB0-REg
Meanwhile, not a single community member who downloaded ISObooter has shown the courtesy to report if the new version works for them.
I feel pressured so I'm skipping doing a major security fix to the Puppy Wiki and run these tests.............NO ONE does anything with the Wiki and I really don't know why I am investing the time in fixing and maintaining a WIki.....since no one EVER reports on using it or if even it works never mind actually adding anything to it.
ISObooter with KLV-Airedale-beta18 ISO setup on a 4 GB USB stick set up via the instructions provided with FAT32 and ext4 partitions about equal in size.
This setup works! with the boot stanza ->
Code: Select all
timeout 10
default 0
title KLV-Airedale-beta18
partnew (hd0,3) 0x00 (hd0,0)/KLV-Airedale-beta18.iso
map --heads=0 --sectors-per-track=0 (hd0,0)/KLV-Airedale-beta18.iso (0xff)
map --hook
root (0xff)
chainloader (0xff)@rcrsn51 This boot stanza works also! Although I am not sure if it is better to use LABEL in the w_bootfrom= and w_changes= statement
Code: Select all
title KLV-Airedale-beta18 (w_changes)
partnew (hd0,3) 0x00 (hd0,0)/KLV-Airedale-beta18.iso
map --heads=0 --sectors-per-track=0 (hd0,0)/KLV-Airedale-beta18.iso (0xff)
map --hook
root (0xff)
kernel /vmlinuz w_bootfrom=/mnt/sdb4 w_changes=/mnt/sdb2/PuppySFS
initrd /initrd.gzThanks for testing ISObooter.
I tried KLV again. The first method (booting to the splash screen) fails when I choose the first menu item. I assumed that this was because KLV needs a writable workspace. But when I tried the second menu item (LABEL ...) it worked. I don't understand KLV's boot options.
The second method (booting directly to the desktop) works for me, but you need to create the folder /mnt/sdb2/PuppySFS and copy KLV's SFS files there. Supposedly, that gives you a writable workspace like a regular hard drive install.
@rcrsn51 This stanza worked well ->
Code: Select all
title KLV-Airedale-beta18 (w_changes)
partnew (hd0,3) 0x00 (hd0,0)/KLV-Airedale-beta18.iso
map --heads=0 --sectors-per-track=0 (hd0,0)/KLV-Airedale-beta18.iso (0xff)
map --hook
root (0xff)
kernel /vmlinuz w_bootfrom=/mnt/sdb4 w_changes=/mnt/sdb2/PuppySFS
initrd /initrd.gzthe target directory will be created automatically w_changes=/mnt/sdb2/PuppySFS
I am now going to try using LABEL on the kernel line. I feel like that will work and be more universal
Persistence works and upper_changes is working correctly
this is what the partitions in this case look like ->