USB MultiBoot for slackware install discs?

WiseDraco · 01-21-2015, 03:17 AM

Hello!
I start new topics about subj some times in last years, but as i remember - not get any solid answer about that.
The question is: what way i can create bootable usb drive, that contains both slackware installers: x86 and x64
I do some research, and find there some multiboot managers:

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/multibo...sb-from-linux/

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-mu...t-usb-creator/

There is written:
" Installing Linux from the YUMI created USB Drive to a Hard Drive is not officially supported. If the installer portion of any Live Linux distro does work, consider it a bonus."

I plan to try it when next Slack version was out, but maybe anyone already have experience with slackware installers from that multiboot managers?

yooy · 01-21-2015, 11:34 AM

If I got you well you want to boot several isos from same usb drive.. i achieved this with app multisystem. But note that when it comes to 32&64bit on the same drive it may complocate about the same name in boot menu.

Didier Spaier · 01-21-2015, 12:09 PM

You could mount an ISO installer for 64 bit, copy all files somewhere, add a /slackware directory copied from a 32 bit ISO, add the 32-bit kernels under /kernels, edit under /isolinux isolinux.cfg to include stanzas for 32-bit kernels (you'll also need to distinguish the labels for 32 vs 64 bits), message.txt and f2.txt to inform the user, add there a 32-bit initrd, rebuild the ISO, run isohybrid on it, dd it on a big enough USB stick.

Technically not difficult, but it's simpler to just have two USB sticks at hand IMO

yancek · 01-21-2015, 08:19 PM

I had both the 32bit and 64 bit iso files of Slackware 14 so I created two partitions on a flash drive. The first was a 200MB boot partition and the second was an ext2 partition. It should not be necessary to create a separate boot partition. Then installed Grub2 to the mbr of the flash pointing to the partition with the boot directory.

Next I created two directories on the ext2 partition, slack32 and slack64. Then loop mounted each the 32bit slack iso file and copied all its contents to the slack32 directory on the flash and repeated the process for the 64bit iso copying the extracted contents to slack64 on the flash drive. I used the menuentries below to boot each.

Quote:

menuentry 'Slack-32' {
set root='(hd0,2)'
linux /slack32/kernels/huge.s/bzImage load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 rw printk.time=0 SLACK_KERNEL=huge.s
initrd /slack32/isolinux/initrd.img
}
menuentry 'Slack-64' {
set root='(hd0,2)'
linux /slack64/kernels/huge.s/bzImage load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 rw printk.time=0 SLACK_KERNEL=huge.s
initrd /slack64/isolinux/initrd.img
}

Both booted to the installer and I started the install for each to test. I didn't finish either install as I already have Slackware 14 installed so I don't know if it will be successful. Separate flash drives would be a lot easier.

turtleli · 01-21-2015, 10:36 PM

I have a multiboot USB stick that can boot with UEFI 64-bit and BIOS 32/64-bit modes for quite a few distros including Slackware 14.1 32/64-bit. I've tested it on an old Thinkpad (32-bit BIOS), a MacBook (64-bit EFI of some sort) and my current PC (64-bit UEFI).

For this I used:

a MBR FAT32 formatted USB stick
syslinux 6.03, with the bootloaders, library modules and config files for EFI and BIOS installed respectively in /efi/boot and /syslinux
Slackware 14.1 and Slackware64-14.1 (ISO or directory tree, doesn't matter), extracted respectively to /slackware-14.1 and /slackware64-14.1, and the two initrd.img extracted from usb-and-pxe-installers/usbboot.img (I haven't tested whether isolinux/initrd.img does the same job, if it does work then I've been working too hard).

This boots and installs properly, and the correct Slackware folder is located automatically by the installers.

The relevant parts from my /syslinux/syslinux.cfg:

Code:

UI menu.c32
PROMPT 0
TIMEOUT 100
ONTIMEOUT slack_auto

MENU DEFAULT slack_auto

# Slackware related
LABEL slack_auto
MENU LABEL Slackware - Autoload depending on architecture
KERNEL	ifcpu.c32
APPEND	64 -- slack64 -- slack32_smp

LABEL slack64
MENU LABEL Slackware 64-bit
KERNEL	/slackware64-14.1/kernels/huge.s/bzImage
INITRD	/slackware64-14.1/kernels/initrd.img
APPEND	load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 rw printk.time=0 SLACK_KERNEL=huge.s nomodeset

LABEL slack32_smp
MENU LABEL Slackware 32-bit SMP
KERNEL	/slackware-14.1/kernels/hugesmp.s/bzImage
INITRD	/slackware-14.1/kernels/initrd.img
APPEND	load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 rw printk.time=0 SLACK_KERNEL=hugesmp.s nomodeset

LABEL slack32_nonsmp
MENU LABEL Slackware 32-bit Non-SMP (Use if other options fails)
KERNEL	/slackware-14.1/kernels/huge.s/bzImage
INITRD	/slackware-14.1/kernels/initrd.img
APPEND	load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 rw printk.time=0 SLACK_KERNEL=huge.s nomodeset

Teufel · 01-22-2015, 01:00 AM

Grub can boot iso directly, without unpacking it to pen drive.
You could just put two ISOs (32/64) to the pen drive, install Grub to MBR and add two menuentries for 32 and 64 iso to grub.cfg
This way you could get two absolutely separated installation environments

I created such a pen drive for Gentoo, Gparted and Mint. To be honest I didn't try it with Slackware ISO.

yancek · 01-22-2015, 01:10 PM

I tried the method I indicated in my post above (#4) and installed without any problems.

Quote:

Grub can boot iso directly, without unpacking it to pen drive.

Grub2 does have that capability but the OS needs to be bootable as an iso and not many are. Most of the major Ubuntus and some tools like Gparted, Parted Magic, SystemRescueCD and a few others. I haven't tried Slackware from an iso either.

WiseDraco · 01-23-2015, 04:14 AM

ok, thanks to all for valuable information. will to try when have a bit of spare time

yancek · 01-23-2015, 09:32 AM

The Slackware docs page has some info on several methods including installing from the iso on the flash drive, near the bottom of the page at the link below.

http://docs.slackware.com/howtos:sla...stall_from_hdd