Preamble
After testing boot from Linux from VHD, I can confirm it works very fine, but the size of the VHD (from 10 to 20 GB) is not something we can really call portable as my Mini-10x64.vhd of 2.3 GB + 360 MB of external Portables LZX compressed.
Our good fellow wimb has included in his program USB_FORMAT the option to boot some Linux ISOs with persistence, and the required size is only the ISO size + the persistence file size, this also works fine, but if we want to customize it as we prefer, then we need to make a big persistence file as it is not compressed.
After testing Porteus-CINNAMON-v5.0rc2-x86_64.iso with a persistence file, I noticed it lacks some programs as a browser and an office suite.
The Puppy Linux slacko64-7.0.iso , fossapup64-9.5.iso and FossaDog-2020-11-15_64-bit-UEFI.iso have integrated a browser, but also dont have an office suite, FossaDog is the more complete version, it also has an option to install LibreOffice, this 3 work very fine booting from a folder on our USB device.
Previous procedure:
- Make a USB device with USB_FORMAT + addon-agFM and selecting Super UEFI
- I recommend the FAT-32 partition U-BOOT should be 8 GB min. to have space for all the following + your WinPE.iso(s)
Procedure for Slako64:
- Create a folder on the root of U-BOOT FAT-32 partition named as Slacko64
- Mount the slacko64-7.0.iso on Win10 or using imdisk or open it with 7-zip and copy/extract it into the Slacko64 folder located on the root of the USB device. In fact the very minimum required files are only all the *.sfs, initrd.gz, and vmlinuz
Procedure for Fossapup64:
- Create a folder on the root of U-BOOT FAT-32 partition named as Fossapup64
- Mount the fossapup64-9.5.iso on Win10 or using imdisk or open it with 7-zip and copy/extract it into the Fossapup64 folder located on the root of the USB device. In fact the very minimum required files are only all the *.sfs, initrd.gz, and vmlinuz
Procedure for FossaDog:
- Mount FossaDog-2020-11-15_64-bit-UEFI.iso on Win10 or using imdisk or open it with 7-zip and copy/extract only the casper folder to the root of the USB U-BOOT FAT-32 partition on your device.
But booting any of the previous 3 Puppy Linux flavors on PCs with Nvidia or AMD graphic cards connected to the screen by HDMI it is very hard if not impossible to make the sound work.
The same approach used by the 2 first Puppy Linux, (by the way very common to boot Linux ISOs by means of grub4dos + a cheat code if required), do not work for FossaDog and it required several test to make it work, extracting only the casper folder.
Then I decided to go a little further and find the way to make Porteus work from a folder on the USB device, (there is no info about this on its page or its forum). and after several intents, I discovered the way to do it, and finally it is working very fine in all cases.
NOTE: Porteus v5RC2 DO NOT have any sound file integrate into it to test the selected sound device, so to test the sound go to Youtube, (I was thinking the sound didn't work until checked this way).
Procedure for Porteus:
- Mount the Porteus-CINNAMON-v5.0rc2-x86_64.iso on Win10 or using imdisk or open it with 7-zip and copy/extract only the porteus folder to the root of the USB device, never delete the porteus-v5.0-x86_64.cfg file or it will not boot.
- Open the porteus folder located on the root of the USB device and copy/extract into it, the boot folder from the ISO. In fact the very minimum required is only boot\syslinux\initrd.xz and boot\syslinux\vmlinuz
My prefered option is Porteus v5RC2 as from it we can create *.xzm modules highly compressed of our current sesion just when we set all to our preferences, it let us select our prefered browser, download and make a module of LibreOffice, also we can download several Bundled premade *.xzm, and we are able to load all or our preferd modules on Ram and work totally as RAMOS or select other modules after booting that will be loaded only when needed.
As an example I put into modules folder firefox-85.0.2-x86_64-es-MX.xzm and my sesion *.xzm and they are loaded every boot and I have LibreOffice-7.1.0-x86_64-es-1bl.xzm into optional folder, in fact I don't use the porteus/changes/save.dat file. And the porteus folder size is only 644 MB, this really beats by far my Mini-10x64.vhd of 2.3 GB
Attached Menus.zip file with the menus (config files) required, if using a just formated USB device without any additional files added, just copy them to the respective locations.
NOTE: If you are adding this menus (config files) to a previously made/formated USB device which already contain some user added files, only copy menu_distro.lst and grub_distro.cfg to the respective locations.
And edit menu.lst adding following entry:
iftitle [if exist (hd0,0)/menu_distro.lst] Portable Distro Menu - (hd0,0)/menu_distro.lst configfile /menu_distro.lst
Also edit grub.cfg adding following entry:
if [ -e "/grub/grub_distro.cfg" ]; then menuentry "Portable Distro Menu - /grub/grub_distro.cfg" { configfile /grub/grub_distro.cfg } fi
Just remember both files have to be UTF-8 without BOM, I use notepad++
Hope this can be of some use for some of you.
EDIT-1: See post No.32 for new info and improved menus
Edit-2: See Post No. 34 for New Porteus approach, and updated menus.
alacran