For those of you following my last few blog posts, agFM v1.72d includes the latest version of the Ventoy disk image scheme.
I have tidied it up a bit and renamed some files so that they appear first in the Ventoy menu system.
Also a new .mnu file is added to the \_ISO\MAINMENU folder to allow you to restore the original E2B partitions from a Legacy boot. This is quicker than booting to E2B - then Ventoy - then grubfm_multiarch.iso - then selecting 'Restore agFM Partition 2'. It also does not need to reboot.
So as not to clutter up the MAINMENU, I have not added three menu entries to switch in the Ventoy disk image files from E2B - you can just run agFM from the E2B menu and then switch in one of the Ventoy disk image files from the agFM Legacy menu.
To try it just extract the agFM download files onto Partition 2 (make sure you have the original agFM partition on Partition 2 first - not the Ventoy 32MB partition 2!).
I noticed that the switch to Ventoy script and the grubfm image's partition restore script appear to require that partition 1 is formatted for NTFS.
ReplyDeleteI have a few USB sticks with E2B which have partition 1 formatted as FAT32 and require it for proper operation of a few payloads.
I was able to do some quick testing by modifying the switch to Ventoy script to allow partition 1 to be type 0x0C in addition to 0X07 and using that let me switch to and run the Ventoy image file without problems. When booting the grubfm image to restore the partitions, I found that script is apparently requiring partition 1 to be formatted as NTFS as well. I was eventually able to switch partitions back using switch_e2b and that worked.
Would it be possible to modify the partition switch scripts to allow partition 1 to be formatted as FAT32 in addition to NTFS? (Another nice feature would be allowing a FAT32 partition 1 when creating a new E2B drive. Maybe as an alternative choice to a type NTFS default.)
Payloads which require FAT32 can be converted to FAT32 .imgptn23 files (or maybe run them as .img, .ima, .imamem, .imgmem or .imarw).
DeleteI don't want to offer the user the choice of formatting ptn1 as FAT32 because of issues with switching in .imgptn files and also the 4GB file size limitation.
Can you give me details of these payloads which require FAT32?
The main one is Tiny Core Linux when booting from ISO image or broken-out files in a folder. At boot, it can mount a partition to load its add-on modules and that partition needs to be a filesystem supported by the OS at boot time and NTFS isn't one of them. (NTFS can be mounted later via NTFS-3G but not at boot.) The mount and load of add-ons seems to work best if the partition is the first one on the drive.
DeleteI've run across a few others with similar requirements but don't remember them off the top of my head; they're things I only tried once or twice and then didn't find them useful enough to keep.
I'd like to try to avoid needing to create an img file just for this as it would mean eating up more space than this would otherwise need to use.
I can understand not wanting to offer FAT32 as a formatting choice to avoid possible confusion but would it at least be possible to allow switching partitions in and out where ptn1 is FAT32 for those like me who manually install E2B?
OK , try v1.72e Beta - it also accepts 0x0C in Ptn1
Deletehttps://1drv.ms/u/s!AqlrQcdsFA-K7xiOaeM2nRsIkfTi?e=IaAbvR
You will need to re-make the three Ventoy images.
Let me know how it goes...
Switching to Ventoy is working now but restoring by booting grubfm_multiarch.iso is not. When I have grub show me the text of the command file, the x07 in that section of code is there but the x0C is missing. Is there a copy of the script embedded in that ISO that needs to be tweaked as well? If not, where is it's copy of the restore script coming from?
DeleteDid you remake the three ventoy disk images?
DeleteI hadn't until I realized that the copy of the restore script that was running was the one from inside the ventoy disk image. I just did that before coming back here to see your message and now it's working well. Thank you!
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