How to boot from an onboard USB stick

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I guess it's a matter of semantic. What I meant is that neither XP/7's boot loader can do it on its own. If you really want to make it happens, you need to ask Windows to chain boot another boot loader. This is also the way EasyBCD works for those non-Windows native options. It creates an image file with a modified and pre-configured grub called NeoGrub. The BCD entry actually load this file.

If SuperGRUB can find all your OSes on the fly, you can try adding an entry with EasyBCD to boot an ISO image of SuperGRUB.

"GRUB for DOS" is another software that may suit your needs. It comes with an image file that can be booted directly by Windows' boot loader so there's no need for an extra step of NeoGrub, which doesn't work with all ISO. GRUB4DOS itself is text mode. WINGRUB, the GUI for it from the same is a bit outdated. If you really want to try it, "Grub4DOS Toolbox" is a better GUI. (Both project on sourceforge)

That word *should* sends *lots* of red-flag reminders flying-with-fireworks inside my mind! GRUB has in my past done well in picking up Win7's BCD while installing a one-and-only Linux distro such as either Mint or Debian into my machine, but a recent SuperGRUB2 scan did not find anything at all. And then, of course, there is that matter you have acknowledged where GRUB essentially holds my machine hostage by not allowing for any re-installations without messing up something else somewhere. GRUB is usually -- *should* be -- fine for dual-booting, but multi-booting is a different matter.


I like the sound of that for getting me closer to what I am trying to do while still learning on-the-fly ...

I might already have what I need to do that, but I will have to take a look to be sure. I generally tend to trust EasyBCD, and I already know a few keystrokes inside SuperGRUB can and will get me to my Mint.


I thank you, and I will take a look.

Tonight's project is to get "Puppy" added to a Win98-2K "test machine" I have sitting here on the side. I do not have enough drives to do a complete cloning of my (this) primary machine, but I can easily experiment-and-learn on that one over there and an 80gb external clone for restoration if I need it.

Still getting closer ...

I have fixed this ...

title Puppy 5.11 (on /dev/hdb1)
root (hd0,0)

... and this ...

title puppeee (on /dev/hdb1)
root (hd0,0)

... to these ...

title Puppy 5.11 (on /dev/hdb1)
root (hd1,0)

title puppeee (on /dev/hdb1)
root (hd1,0)

... and now I end up here ...

"Searching for Puppy files in computer disc drives...lupu-511.sys not found" ...

... not long after the keyboard driver has been loaded.

That "lupu-511.sfs" file is right where the loader has told the machine to go, so me and my wookie mittens at least *suspect* my Puppy is not finding its way back home after doing a little Puppeeeeeing around and sniffing my drives ...

What next?

Lau, have you ever trained one of these Pups?

Is it installed to a subdirectory? If so you have to pass the directory to the kernel:
kernel /lupu-510/vmlinuz psubdir=lupu-510

Got it!

As I had already mentioned, the problem began with Puppy's separate GRUB installer for dual-booting with Windows not being up-to-date with the latest version of Puppy. And along with that, the boot-loader-installation instructions *within* Puppy do not exactly match what is actually available there. That part was no big deal, however, since those instructions also said to *not* put a loader anywhere during Puppy's installation since GRUB would be expected to do that later.

Ultimately, the entire problem came down to this:

==========================

title Puppy 5.11 (on /dev/hdb1) << I had to change that to the correct drive and partition
root (hd1,0) << I had to change that to the correct drive
kernel /puppy511/vmlinuz psubdir=boxpup pkeys=us << I had to change *both* folder names to "puppy511"
initrd /puppy511/initrd.gz << << I had to also change this folder name to "puppy511"

==========================

The GRUB load *should* have done its job perfectly and it *could* have done so if someone had updated it to match the current distro of Puppy ...

... and that kind of thing is just about my only "complaint" about Linux:

As far as GRUB(legacy), GRUB, GRUB2, SuperGRUB and SuperGRUB2 are concerned, life there is far too much like Forrest's box of chocolates:

You just never know *what* you might get or *what* might happen if/when you venture into trying to put any two or more Linux systems together in one machine. Sometimes they see other operating systems already there and sometimes they do not, and I believe it accurate to say not one of them can pick up an existing system's loader and add that to its own like Windows can do, and unfailingly (with only one exception, as far as I know) . But once you get past all of that, I say Linux has Windows beat "All hands down!" and all the way around.

Last edited by leejosepho on 24 Sep 2010, 3:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Ah, I just posted and now I see your post.

Yes, you got it.

Glad you figure it out on your own.

All but the final edit. Someone over at the Puppy forum pointed out the need to change the name for the subdir folder! That change seems logically-obvious now, but at the time I could not imagine where any subdir folder might even be since all of Puppy is in just one folder. But overall, most things I have either learned or have eventually "figured out" over this past year have in one way or another come from you and others right here ... and we can blame Fuzzy for all this Minty stuff since he is the one who first suggested it! But as to Ubuntu, I have done a search of my entire machine and deleted it all.

Well, I got an administrative e-mail from the Ubuntu Forum this morning, and that means I have likely been banned from there because of some really nasty stuff I posted when none of them f--kers responded to my request for help ...

Cool. Truly cool.

The folks over at the Puppy Forum are much nicer anyway ...

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 724#453724

The guys at puppy forum seems helpful.

I see you are trying out Grub for DOS. If you want to use it with the Win7 bootloader, use BCDEdit to add grldr.mbr to the boot menu.

You can also use "Grub4DOS Toolbox" (available on sourceforge) to add the entry to BCD. You have to copy grldr, grldr.mbr, menu.lst manually to C:\.

Yes, and it is excellent! I have yet to get to my overall goal of having each OS available on the first menu screen at startup, but I can see that might not be too far away. And best of all, at least as I see things, I have not had to go anywhere near my MBR or boot sector! The "grldr" is on "C" (root), and I have an easy-edit "menu.lst" file right there with it. GRUB4DOS is most definitely some top-shelf software.


I have yet to learn how to use BCDEdit, but I do see how that could/would work.

For now, I have told Win7 to display XP's "boot.ini" (NTLDR) as default-to-start, and then I have told 2K-XP (NTLDR) to display GRUB4DOS as default, and I have told GRUB4DOS (if it runs after the 8-second delay when no key has been pressed) to just display its own "menu.lst" and go no further until a selection actually *has* been made. That lets me start my machine and go get my coffee while it starts without having to wait for a start screen to make a selection right away ... and doing that has put GRUB4DOS, NTLDR (2K and XP), Win 7, Win98 and Mint all on my first screen so far, but some still need more than one or two key presses to make them boot.


I will take a look at that, but I really do want to leave my MBR completely alone. At the moment, I could repair, reinstall, remove and /or replace *any* system on my machine without in *any* way compromising or affecting any other beyond possibly needing a three-minute "fixboot" for NTLDR or BCD.

Definitely it is best not to change it, once you have a functional master system working, and install everything else without installing a bootloader. Glad it is all working for you now.

Yes, and I thank you.

I did use EasyBCD to add Mint to Win7's BCD, and now I *suspect* EasyBCD *might* have made some kind of change to Mint's loader on its (Mint's) own "/boot" partition, because now Mint (during startup) occasionally (but not every time) reports some kind of difference between its "/boot" partition and its backup for same. So, now it looks like I will have to learn how to update Mint's backups and do disk checks (fschk?) ...! But overall, everything is working well ... and the next challenge is to add Puppy to the default "grldr" menu I have only had to slightly modify so far.

"Grub4DOS Toolbox" is just an GUI for Grub4DOS, it doesn't add anything on top of it. One of its function, "Add Grub4DOS to bootmgr boot menu (Vista/2008 above)", will add an BCD entry to boot Grub4DOS and nothing more. You even have to copy the files (grldr, grldr.mbr, menu.lst) yourself.

If you prefer to use BCDEdit, here's the commands:
bcdedit /create /d "Grub4DOS" /application bootsector
It'll reply:
The entry {guid} was successfully created.
* mark down the {guid}, and substitute it to the following commands
bcdedit /set {guid} device partition=C:
bcdedit /set {guid} path \grldr.mbr
bcdedit /displayorder {guid} /addlast

What is that "d"?

On this machine, "D" ((hd1,0) or sdb*) is the beginning of my second drive, all storage.

/d = description, ie the name shown in the menu

This is the line that specify the location of Grub4DOS:
/set {guid} device partition=C: