Monday 27 May 2013

Beta30 v5 now available - full release soon - please try this version!

Only minor changes in this version:

  • XP Step 1 install now loads the ISO into memory - this may prevent BSOD on some systems.
  • Updated grub4dos version
  • Updated some readme and help htm files.
  • Added E2B stamp to the background.

Please let me know of anything that is wrong or could be improved in this version. I will release it as the official full release after 1 week of no bug reports or changes.

Wednesday 22 May 2013

Easy2Boot BETA 30 v4

This version of BETA30 should be the same as v3, except with this version you can turn an E2B USB drive into a bootable ISO.

Don't get too excited though because many things won't work!
Windows XP via WinPE installs and Win8/SVR2012 installs won't work (Vista/7 and XP step1/2 may work but I have not tested them!).
Many linux ISO won't work unless you use a .mnu file which has special cheat codes in it - this is because I can't use the partnew command on a CD!

WARNING! If you try to use the partnew command in any of your .mnu files, it could wipe a partition on the internal hard disk that you boot the CD/DVD on!

WARNING!!!: If you have used any of the old sample .mnu files for linux ISO's - remove them before you boot from the E2B CD!!!! These .mnu files will wipe the 4th partition of your hard disk without warning if you boot from an E2B CD/DVD!!!!!

I have modified the Sample .mnu files now so they just abort if you try to use them on a CD.

Simple ISOs like KonBoot, or plpbt or WinPE ISOs will work though. Hirens Mini XP will work if you use an extension of .isomem (.isoWinvH does not fully work).

The CD\DVD that you make will also support FASTLOAD so it does not have to enumerate all the ISOs each time it boots.

Here is what you need to do to turn your E2B Flash memory stick into a bootable CD/DVD:

1. Make a USB Flash drive (or USB HDD) with BETA30 v4 or later
2. Add your payload files and test as normal
3. (optional) If you want FASTLOAD enabled on your final CD/DVD then copy FASTLOAD.YES to the root of the USB drive
4. (optional) If you have FASTLOAD enabled, boot the USB drive on a real system. Then reboot it to check that it loads the menu from cache correctly.
5. Run RMPrepUSB and select the USB drive - then type Ctrl+M  (File - Make grub4dos ISO from drive). This will make a bootable ISO.
6. (optional) Test the ISO using RMPrepUSB Ctrl+F11  (File - Boot from ISO using QEMU Emulator)
7. Burn your ISO (or copy it to a Zalman ZM VE-200/300/400 or IsoStick for testing).

BETA30 v4 is available at the bottom of the Tutorial 72a page.

E2B BETA30 v3 - AUTO folder is back!

I have re-instated the \_ISO\AUTO folder!
If you populate it with payload files (e.g. ISOs) and .txt files (optional) then you will see the DIRECT BOOT Menu appear in the Main menu.
You can have sub-folders under a \_ISO\AUTO and all payload files will all be listed in the DIRECT BOOT menu.
Another small change: Hotkeys for SubMenus such as BACKUP, ANTIVIRUS, etc. now are all Ctrl+ combinations.

Tuesday 21 May 2013

E2B BETA30 v2

Some changes to the menus to add F7-F10 to all of them and then add hotkey menu in the Footer at the bottom of the display.


Monday 20 May 2013

E2B BETA30 re-uploaded

Just some small changes have been made as the P, C, E and B keys are used by grub4dos so these need to be kept free. So I have used Ctrl+B and Ctrl+W for the Backup and WinPE hotkeys now. Please re-download and overwrite current files to refresh your USB drive. I have not bothered to change the version number as the changes are very small.

Easy2Boot BETA30 v1 now available

I have deleted the AUTO and MNU folders and menu entries.

Instead you have some-predefined Main menu folders. If you place a payload file inside one of the folders then that folder will appear in the Main menu. BACKUP_LINUX and UTILITIES_MEMTEST are sub-menus of the BACKUP and UTILITIES folder.


ANTIVIRUS
BACKUP
BACKUP_LINUX
docs
DOS
e2b
FASTLOAD.YES
FASTLOAD_Read_Me.txt
LINUX
MAINMENU
ReadMe.txt
Sample_MyE2B.cfg
UTILITIES
UTILITIES_MEMTEST
WINDOWS
WINPE


If you just download the BETA30 and make a new USB drive, you will see that BACKUP, DOS and UTILITIES will be listed, but not the other folders (WINPE, LINUX, ANTIVIRUS) as they are empty.

The UTILITIES menu has a Plop ISO and also a sub-menu entry for MEMORY TEST programs. The UTILITIES_MEMTEST folder contains memtest86+.
The DOS menu just has a FreeDos bootable floppy disk image.
The BACKUP menu is currently empty but it is displayed because there is a sub-menu .mnu file in it of Backup_Linux.mnu. So if you add some payload files to the \_ISO\BACKUP_LINUX folder, then the Linux sub-menu will be listed.

All these examples have hotkey's assigned, so if you are using GFXMenu, you will need to remove the hotkey text from each of the SubMenuXXXX.mnu files in the \_ISO\MAINMENU folder. I assume that if you are experienced with GFXMenu then you will know how to do this!

I hope this new menu system is easier to understand and you can easily add more sub-folders by just copying an existing SubMenuXXXX.mnu file.

Note that because the .mnu files are enumerated in a semi-random order, the order of each entry in the Main menu cannot be pre-set or pre-determined. If you want the Main menu ordered in a different way, then you need to combine all of the SubMenuXXX.mnu files with the MAINMENU.mnu file to make a MyMainMenu.mnu file and then delete the old .mnu files.








Easy2Boot - all change for BETA30!


OK. I have pretty much decided to drop the AUTO and MNU folders and just use a few new folders for BETA30

So I will include as standard Main Menu entries (if there is a file in the folder):

LINUX
UTILITIES
ANTIVIRUS
BACKUP
WINPE

and UTILITIES  will also have a sub-sub-menu of MEMTEST for an example of how to make a sub-sub-menu.
So the user can select Utilities from the Main menu,and then select Memtest from the Utilities menu and then the Memtest menu will list all the memory test utilities that the user has put there.

so the folder structure will look like this:

\_ISO\E2B
\_ISO\WINDOWS
\_ISO\MAINMENU
\_ISO\LINUX
\_ISO\ANTIVIRUS
\_ISO\BACKUP
\_ISO\WINPE
\_ISO\UTILITIES
\_ISO\UTILITIES_MEMTEST

and the \_ISO\MAINMENU folder will also now contain the .mnu files for these:

\_ISO\MAINMENU\SubMenuLinux.mnu
\_ISO\MAINMENU\SubMenuAntiVirus.mnu
\_ISO\MAINMENU\SubMenuBackup.mnu
\_ISO\MAINMENU\SubMenuWinPE.mnu
\_ISO\MAINMENU\SubMenuUtilities.mnu

and for the sub-sub-menu, I will include the .mnu file...

\_ISO\UTILITIES\Utilities_MemTest.mnu

Users can copy these .mnu files or change them to have their own MainMenu 'folders' and edit the text for their own language or add/change hotkeys.

Please let me know if you have any strong objections ASAP!

Sunday 19 May 2013

Easy2Boot - adding extra folders

If  you want to create sub-folder entries in the Main menu, e.g. have sub-menus for say Backup, Utilities, Linux, Hirens ISOs, DOS images, BIOS update images, Diagnostics, etc.  you can add all of these to the Main menu by adding a .mnu file for each one (but you will need to edit a few lines!).
Hotkeys can also be assigned to these entries.

The instructions on how to do this are now in Tutorial 72a and the required Example_Backup.mnu file is in the latest (refreshed) BETA29V11 download  (just re-uploaded!).


This example BACKUP menu entry leads to another menu which will list all payload/.mnu files under \_ISO\BACKUP.
You can even nest these menus and have sub-sub-menus, etc. etc. etc.

Saturday 18 May 2013

E2B BETA29 v11 now available!


  • minor changes to menus - re-worded to look better
  • Fix [L] appearing in GFXMenu for List PCI devices
  • Fix selecting blank menu entry in GFXMenu causes reversion to text mode menu
  • hotkey utility changed to latest version (old one caused keyboard problems)
  • ubuntu with persistence .mnu sample file added
  • Tails HDD .mnu sample file added (needed to boot Tails from USB HDD - not needed if booting from Flash drive)
Please update to this version (overwrites 5 or 6 files only).
Thanks to halikus for bug spotting and suggestions!



Friday 17 May 2013

Booting Ubuntu 12.10/13.04 from an ISO with persistence from an NTFS USB drive

Grub4dos booting of Ubuntu with persistence from an ISO is fairly easy if you use a FAT32 USB boot drive. You just add the keyword 'persistent' into the command line and set the iso-scan/filename= to the name of the iso and create your ext2 casper-rw in the root using RMPrepUSB:


title Try Ubuntu without installing
find --set-root /ubuntu-12.10-desktop-i386.iso
map /ubuntu-12.10-desktop-i386.iso (0xff) || map --mem /ubuntu-12.10-desktop-i386.iso (0xff)
map --hook
root (0xff)
# NOTE: Next line may wrap, it should start with kernel and end woth splash --
kernel /casper/vmlinuz  file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed noprompt boot=casper persistent iso-scan/filename=/ubuntu-12.10-desktop-i386.iso quiet splash --
initrd /casper/initrd.lz

However. when I tried this from my Easy2Boot USB hard drive, it booted fine, but persistence would not work.
The reason for this is that my USB hard drive was formatted as NTFS.
Many Ubuntu versions will not mount a casper-rw persistent file automatically if it is on an NTFS volume.
As you may know, Easy2Boot uses the trick of using the grub4dos partnew command to map a spare partition entry to an ISO file. In this way, nearly all linux ISOs can be directly booted with Easy2Boot (without needing the iso-scan/filename=xxx.iso cheat code).

Well, we can use the same trick to map the casper-rw file to an empty partition too!
Even better, we can rename the casper-rw file because linux will look for a volume name of casper-rw first before it looks for a file called casper-rw and we can put the file anywhere we like on the boot drive! This means we can have 2 or more different versions of linux ISOs (e.g. Ubuntu 12.04, 11.01, 11.10 and 12.10)  all on the same multiboot USB drive and all using different 'casper-rw' files!

The grub4dos menu for this is fairly simple too (a simplified version with no checks is shown below):


title Ubuntu-12.10-desktop-i386 PERSISTENT
partnew (hd0,2) 0x0 /ubuntu1210-rw
partnew (hd0,3) 0x0 /ubuntu-12.10-desktop-i386.iso
map /ubuntu-12.10-desktop-i386.iso (0xff)
map --hook
root (0xff)
kernel /casper/vmlinuz file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper persistent quiet splash --
initrd /casper/initrd.lz 


However, I have added some checks to make sure we do not trash the 3rd partition (I don't check the 4th partition in this menu, Easy2Boot already checks that the 4th partition is free when it boots) and made an Easy2Boot Ubuntu.12.10.mnu file for Ubuntu as follows:


# Make a \casper-rw ext2 file using RMPrepUSB in the root of the drive (MUST be made as casper-rw)
# Rename the file to \Ubuntu1210-rw
# Place this .mnu file and the Ubuntu ISO in either \_ISO\MainMenu\Linux or \_ISO\MNU\Linux
# This menu will work even on an NTFS USB boot drive

iftitle [if exist (bd)%MFOLDER%/Linux/ubuntu-12.10-desktop-i386.iso] Ubuntu ubuntu-12.10-desktop-i386 PERSISTENT\n Boot using .mnu file with persistence
#enable parttype output
debug 1
# make empty table entry in 3rd position in ptn table
parttype (hd0,2) | set check=
debug off
set check=%check:~-5,4%
if "%check%"=="0x00" partnew (hd0,2) 0 0 0
if not "%check%"=="0x00" echo WARNING: PTN TABLE ENTRY 3 IS ALREADY IN USE - PERSISTENCE MAY NOT WORK! && pause
debug 1
if not exist (bd)/ubuntu1210-rw echo WARNING: /ubuntu1210-rw persistence file not found! && pause
errorcheck off
if "%check%"=="0x00" partnew (hd0,2) 0x0 (bd)/ubuntu1210-rw
errorcheck on
#map ptn 4 to ISO
partnew (hd0,3) 0x0 (bd)%MFOLDER%/Linux/ubuntu-12.10-desktop-i386.iso
map (bd)%MFOLDER%/Linux/ubuntu-12.10-desktop-i386.iso (0xff)
map --hook
root (0xff)
kernel /casper/vmlinuz file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper persistent quiet splash --
initrd /casper/initrd.lz 


This should work for most versions of Ubuntu.

For 13.04 x64 you need to load the /casper/vmlinuz.efi kernel:
iftitle [if exist (bd)%MFOLDER%/Linux/ubuntu-13.04-desktop-amd64.iso] Ubuntu 13.04 Persistent\n Boot using .mnu file with persistence - assumes we have a casper-rw ext2/3/4 partition
partnew (hd0,3) 0x0 (bd)%MFOLDER%/Linux/ubuntu-13.04-desktop-amd64.iso
map (bd)%MFOLDER%/Linux/ubuntu-13.04-desktop-amd64.iso (0xff)
map --hook
root (0xff)
kernel /casper/vmlinuz.efi file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper quiet splash -- persistent
initrd /casper/initrd.lz

E2B .mnu file (using ext2 /ubuntu1304-rw file)
iftitle [if exist (bd)%MFOLDER%/Linux/ubuntu-13.04-desktop-amd64.iso] Ubuntu 13.04 PERSISTENT\n Boot using .mnu file with persistence
set ISO=%MFOLDER%/Linux/ubuntu-13.04-desktop-amd64.iso
set PF=/ubuntu1304-rw
#enable parttype output
debug 1
# make empty table entry in 3rd position in ptn table
parttype (hd0,2) | set check=
debug off
set check=%check:~-5,4%
if "%check%"=="0x00" partnew (hd0,2) 0 0 0
if not "%check%"=="0x00" echo WARNING: PTN TABLE 3 IS ALREADY IN USE - PERSISTENCE MAY NOT WORK! && pause
debug 1
if not exist (bd)%PF% echo WARNING: %PF% persistence file not found! && pause
errorcheck off
if "%check%"=="0x00" partnew (hd0,2) 0x0 (bd)%PF%
errorcheck on
#map ptn 4 to ISO
partnew (hd0,3) 0x0 (bd)%ISO%
map (bd)%ISO% (0xff)
map --hook
root (0xff)
kernel /casper/vmlinuz.efi  boot=casper persistent noeject noprompt quiet splash --
initrd /casper/initrd.lz 

Once you have booted to Ubuntu you can change the Desktop wallpaper or create a file on the Desktop and it should still be there when you reboot.

Whilst in Ubuntu, here are a few things you can try:

In the Desktop - click on your USB drive (listed in left-hand panel) to view the contents
CTRL+ALT+F1   - go to command shell
ls /media
if /media/ubuntu is not listed type:sudo mkdir /media/ubuntu  - now switch back to the Desktop GUI (ctrl+alt+F7) and can now browse your USB drive to mount it (this is a bug in the x86 liveCD!) - now press CTRL+Alt+F1 again.

ls /media/ubuntu/  - should see your USB drive listed (e.g. WDPassPort)

CTRL+ALT+F7 - return to Desktop GUI

mount -l     - lists mounted volumes

df -h   - should see /cow persistent ptn listed (doesn't mean it is working though!)

To make a new 2GB ext4 file:
cd /media/ubuntu/WDPassPort
rm casper-rw
rm casper-rw ubuntu1210-rw

dd if=/dev/zero of=casper-rw bs=1M count=2048
mkfs.ext4 -F casper-rw
mv casper-rw ubuntu1210-rw

As I am not a 'linux' user/guru and don't own any sandals (it's cold in the UK), please correct me if any of the linux commands are not accurate!

Hope you find this useful!

P.S. The latest versions of RMPrepUSB (v2.1.713 and later) will allow you to create an ext2 file with a volume name that you specify separately, so you can create in one step an ext2 file called, say, 'Ubuntu-rw' with a volume name of 'casper-rw'.