Create a multi boot rescue USB flash drive

By Si
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Grand Master

Panacik

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Is there any way for me to make this work with XP?

Care to alaborate as to what you mean by "make this work with XP?" Do you mean you want to install XP from it, or you want to install XP TO it?

Edited by bmaher
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Grand Master

Panacik

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Guys, Please remember that Hirens Boot CD is considered to be warez.

Sorry. I wasnt sure as there is a boot cd that changes the admin password mentioned in the tutorial by Si.

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  • 2 weeks later...
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silvertorch

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Thanks for the guide, created a USB "Rescue/Fix/Ghost" drive and it works like a charm.

I also got a shell working on PE 2.0. Its called blackbox and it works pretty good.

Let me know if you have questions about it.

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Grand Master

Si Veteran

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Wow, I can't say I'd even considered putting a shell on PE. I have been using the A43 file manager and some small tools from the command line. Nice work (Y)

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silvertorch

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Wow, I can't say I'd even considered putting a shell on PE. I have been using the A43 file manager and some small tools from the command line. Nice work (Y)

Thanks.

I needed to create a way to boot and use Ghost at the company where I work, so I figured I put in a shell so it would be a little easier to work with.

Also all of the Portable Apps work just fine in the PE 2.0 environment.

Again, thanks for the guide.

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Neowinian

BerT6801

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Wow, Im shocked how easy this guide is...but I still need some help. I have to admit my knowledge of Grub or any linux distro is limited. I have tried to add a few more options to my flash boot, bartPE, Hirems, Even knoppix with no avail, could someone help me out with the steps to add to this setup?

thankyou. the guide is great.

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Grand Master

Panacik

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Wow, Im shocked how easy this guide is...but I still need some help. I have to admit my knowledge of Grub or any linux distro is limited. I have tried to add a few more options to my flash boot, bartPE, Hirems, Even knoppix with no avail, could someone help me out with the steps to add to this setup?

thankyou. the guide is great.

Can you paste the contents of your menu.lst file please.

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Neowinian

BerT6801

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Right now it just has the things listed in this tutorials list. Nothing more. As things didnt work, I removed entries that I had been attempting.

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Grand Master

Panacik

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Right now it just has the things listed in this tutorials list. Nothing more. As things didnt work, I removed entries that I had been attempting.

You need to list what you have and what you are trying to use. Without this we cannot say for sure what you are doing wrong.

Also any error messages you recieve when you try to load the environments would be good.

We basically need as much info as possible to help you out and at the moment we have nothing to work with from you.

You should also know that i have knoppix, Hirems and BartPE booting from my USB, so if you post your menu.lst, i should be able to compair and tell you where you are going wrong quickly.

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Neowinian

BerT6801

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You need to list what you have and what you are trying to use. Without this we cannot say for sure what you are doing wrong.

Also any error messages you recieve when you try to load the environments would be good.

We basically need as much info as possible to help you out and at the moment we have nothing to work with from you.

You should also know that i have knoppix, Hirems and BartPE booting from my USB, so if you post your menu.lst, i should be able to compair and tell you where you are going wrong quickly.

well here is the deal, Im not sure how to make a img file of the live CDs, I tried to make a Img file like the floppy files included in the tutorial and when I inserted the commands in my menu.lst like this

title knoppix

kernel /memdisk

initrd /knoppix

it would not work,,,,, i booted the usb drive and it wouldnt even show up as a item to select in the menu....so I just figured I was doing it completely wrong. I kinda hate to say thats what I tried cause I know its completely wrong odviously....please dont laugh too hard.

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Grand Master

Panacik

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well here is the deal, Im not sure how to make a img file of the live CDs, I tried to make a Img file like the floppy files included in the tutorial and when I inserted the commands in my menu.lst like this

title knoppix

kernel /memdisk

initrd /knoppix

it would not work,,,,, i booted the usb drive and it wouldnt even show up as a item to select in the menu....so I just figured I was doing it completely wrong. I kinda hate to say thats what I tried cause I know its completely wrong odviously....please dont laugh too hard.

I see. You dont need to make an img file. That does not work for all systems.

For knoppix, i just coppied the live CD to a folder called KNOPPIX in the root. Then i made my menu.lst look like this:

title 8. Knoppix

chainloader +1

rootnoverify

For barts PE i did this:

title 3. Barts PE

find --set-root /minint/setupldr.bin

chainloader /minint/setupldr.bin

And for system rescue CD i did this:

title 2. System Rescue CD

kernel /rescuecd initrd=initram.igz video=ofonly vga=0 scandelay=5

initrd /initram.igz

Hopefully this will give you a bit more guidance.

Let us know how it goes. If it still does not work, we can try other things mate.

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Neowinian

BerT6801

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Im giving that a try as we speak, but how is that knoppix entry actually linking to the knoppix folder in any way? Not to mention that knoppix disk I have seems to have a Knoppix folder already in the root of the CD. Im going after a new one now

I have several others to put on here including a winxp live CD. so it would seem to each entry to the .lst file, I dont understand how it works so I can proceed by myself.

Im trying to get Hirens, knoppix, winxp live, and nimbleX on one flash, thats my goal here. and maybe a maxblast or something along the way. total repair disk all in all

could u explain what "chainloader +1 and rootverify actually do? or even point me to a direction of good reading, Im not afraid to do my own digging,,

another question, I see how all these OS's are getting installed in the root of the disk, does that not make things a bit confusing. is there a way to have each reside in a seperate folder, or will it just not work like that

Im downloading newer version of knoppix and nimblex now... i will post results later, thanks again

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Grand Master

Panacik

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Im giving that a try as we speak, but how is that knoppix entry actually linking to the knoppix folder in any way? Not to mention that knoppix disk I have seems to have a Knoppix folder already in the root of the CD. Im going after a new one now

I have several others to put on here including a winxp live CD. so it would seem to each entry to the .lst file, I dont understand how it works so I can proceed by myself.

Im trying to get Hirens, knoppix, winxp live, and nimbleX on one flash, thats my goal here. and maybe a maxblast or something along the way. total repair disk all in all

could u explain what "chainloader +1 and rootverify actually do? or even point me to a direction of good reading, Im not afraid to do my own digging,,

another question, I see how all these OS's are getting installed in the root of the disk, does that not make things a bit confusing. is there a way to have each reside in a seperate folder, or will it just not work like that

Im downloading newer version of knoppix and nimblex now... i will post results later, thanks again

All good questions mate. However some i cant answer.

I believe the chainloader and rootverify look for a loader called linux, which is in the root of the USB stick. This in turn loads Knoppix.

I too wanted to put everything in seperate folders. With the .img files you can literally put them where you like and chainload to them, then all the files are called from within the .img and it seems the img as an actual drive.

However, if you are running knoppix and bartPE, it relies on folders and files being in a certain location on the disk. Where i chainload to /minint/setupldr.bin, i could chainload to that setupldr.bin file anywhere on the disk, however, when that file is loaded the setupldr.bin looks for other files and folders within a folder called minint. I managed to hex edit the setupldr.bin file to point it to a different folder, which worked to a point, but other files that it calls on later look in minint also, so it would take forever to hex edit all the files.

Short answer is, no, you cant have them on seperate folders.

Now, i am sure it is possible somehow to actually partition some USB sticks. What you could do is create a partition for each system and use grub4dos on each partition. This would make it cleaner and easier to identify each OS etc. However, i was unable to find a way to do this myself, so if you go with this and are successful, i would be pleased to know how!

For knoppix, you need to copy everything from the CD to the USB, without putting them in a sub folder. Then if you do what i put in my menu.lst, that should be enough to get knoppix booting.

Something to note about /memdisk, is that it has a limit to the size of .img/ima files it can open. I think even if you could put a whole linx distro in to a 700meg img file, it owuld not be able to open it ok.

Sorry i could be any more help mate. I spent a lot of time searching for answers to get my USB the way i wanted it and have 8 OS and programs in total running from my disk, including DOS etc.

There are a lot of tutorials and information on the net, but it can be hard to find/ask what you are looking for. It took me a whole weekend of playing around to finally get a working disk, so you will need patience.

The main please to go it http://grub4dos.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page. It shows you a lot fo the commands and what they do and can be used for. From there you should be able to get more of a concept on what it is you need to look for on the net.

Keep up the work though mate. You seem to know what you are doing to some degree and as you are willing to search yourself, that has to be commended.

Rich

EDIT: Wow... didnt realise i had typed so much! Sorry about that dude! :D

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Grand Master

markwolfe Veteran

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Guys, Please remember that Hirens Boot CD is considered to be warez.
...

Im trying to get Hirens ...

As already stated above, Hirens contains warez - unauthorized copies of proprietary 'pay-for' software.
...

could u explain what "chainloader +1 and rootverify actually do? or even point me to a direction of good reading, Im not afraid to do my own digging ...

chainloader, rootnoverify and all other GNU GRUB options are explained in their documentation: http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html

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Grand Master

markwolfe Veteran

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I saw him asking about Knoppix and what chainloader did. The GRUB docs seemed to be appropriate.

I may have missed your post a few minutes earlier than mine if I was typing it as you were doing yours. Or maybe because it is the first post at the top of the next page. Either way, yeah, my post is somewhat redundant by 6 minutes.

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Grand Master

Panacik

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I saw him asking about Knoppix and what chainloader did. The GRUB docs seemed to be appropriate.

I may have missed your post a few minutes earlier than mine if I was typing it as you were doing yours. Or maybe because it is the first post at the top of the next page. Either way, yeah, my post is somewhat redundant by 6 minutes.

Lol. Fair enough mate.

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  • 4 months later...
Grand Master

Si Veteran

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Where can I find ntpass.img?

It is not on the systemrescuecd_x86-1.1.1.iso, release date 2008-11-10.

Thanks in advance

OK they've changed the way they include it.

Copy the ntpass folder to the root of your flash drive, and then use this entry instead of the above one for ntpass:

title ntpass
kernel /ntpasswd/vmlinuz rw vga=1 initrd=/ntpasswd/initrd.cgz /ntpasswd/scsi.cgz
initrd=/ntpasswd/initrd.cgz

It at least booted for me, hope it works for you too (Y)

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Grand Master

Yusuf M. Veteran

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Wonderful guide Si. I just wish I knew about this thread much earlier. It would've came in handy on many occasions. Good job! :)

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Grand Master

Panacik

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Wonderful guide Si. I just wish I knew about this thread much earlier. It would've came in handy on many occasions. Good job! :)
Glad to be of assistance :)

Because of this thread i used the ideas and now have a 4 gig USB that i use that has a LOT of features, including a fully bootable linux distro. :D

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