Tuesday 1 November 2016

Add salix+persistence to E2B

Following from a request from kasep, here is how to boot salix with persistence from E2B.

Salix with Persistence (folder STEVE was created)

From various experiments, I could not get salix to recognise an ext3 persistence file when mapped to partition 3 of the E2B drive. It seems that salix specifically looks for a 'persistent' file in the root of a FAT32 or ext3 volume with a volume name of  'LIVE'.

So, we need to convert the .ISO file to a FAT32 .imgPTN file. Here is how I did it:

1. Download the salixlive64-xfce-14.2-rc1.iso  from here.

2. Drag-and-drop the .iso file onto the MPI_FAT32 Desktop shortcut (you need to install the MPI Tool Pack first) - IMPORTANT: Increase the suggested size to allow for the persistence file. In my case it wanted approx 1.1GB for the ISO, so I made the .imgPTN file 1500MB to allow for a 400MB persistence file later.

3. Copy the .imgPTN file to your E2B drive (e.g. \_ISO\LINUX folder).

4. Use \_ISO\SWITCH_E2B.exe to switch in the partition image.

5. Use Windows Explorer to rename the Volume name of the new partition from Easy2Boot to LIVE  (all capital letters) using right-click - Properties on the USB drive letter/icon in Explorer...


6. Edit the \boot\menu\menu_en.cfg file (or whichever one you will use for your language) to add in a persistence parameter which was removed by the MPI Tool Kit - the extra text required is shown in red below (add changes=persistent to the end of the line in the second menu item - do not add a new line):

label salix
MENU LABEL ^Salix Live
MENU DEFAULT
kernel /boot/vmlinuz
append initrd=/boot/initrd.gz max_loop=255 vga=791 locale=en_US.utf8 keymap=us useswap=yes copy2ram=no tz=Etc/GMT hwc=localtime runlevel=4

label salix + persistent
MENU LABEL ^Salix Live [persistent]
kernel /boot/vmlinuz
append initrd=/boot/initrd.gz max_loop=255 vga=791 locale=en_US.utf8 keymap=us useswap=yes copy2ram=no tz=Etc/GMT hwc=localtime runlevel=4 changes=persistent

7. Finally, use the RMPrepUSB - Create Ext2/3/4 FS button (use latest version of RMPrepUSB) and create a file on the LIVE volume:
Name: persistent
Volume name: persistent
Size: (enough to occupy any remaining spare space)
Type: ext3

You can now boot to salix via the CSM Menu and it's syslinux menu.

If you want to directly boot to Salix with persistence without booting to the syslinux menu, then you can add a new menu item to \menu.lst:

title Salix+Persistence for UK users\n Boot to salix with persistence
kernel /boot/vmlinuz max_loop=255 vga=791 locale=en_GB.utf8 keymap=us useswap=yes copy2ram=no tz=Etc/GMT hwc=localtime runlevel=4 changes=persistent
initrd=/boot/initrd.gz 
boot

You can delete any unwanted menu items (place # in front of each unwanted 'title' or 'iftitle' line).

No comments:

Post a Comment