SLAX - USB Troubles

[securitybreach]

Well, brand new flash drive right out of the package... Install SLAX as per SLAX instructions.Make bootable as per SLAX instructions.SLAX will STILL NOT boot from either of my machines. Same BS... No Operating System Found.I give up. Life is way too short to be piddling around with this. It's too bad, too. I never should have upgrade that original SLAX. It was working fine. Hmm... I'll have to carry a Hirens CD around with me now when I go to help my family/friends with their MS Windows woes. :(Later...

Well that sux...sorry to hear that. I know you really liked Slax.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

It's really strange, ain't it? I'm going to try ONE MORE TIME. This time I'm going to wipe and load the flash drive from within my Win 7 installation on the laptop. That's the only thing I haven't tried so far.P.S. I just thought of another way... I'll mail you the flash drive and you can load it up for me. Once you're sure it's working, you can mail it back to me.

[securitybreach]

It's really strange, ain't it? I'm going to try ONE MORE TIME. This time I'm going to wipe and load the flash drive from within my Win 7 installation on the laptop. That's the only thing I haven't tried so far.P.S. I just thought of another way... I'll mail you the flash drive and you can load it up for me. Once you're sure it's working, you can mail it back to me.

I could do that

[jimg]

Perhaps the boot flag is not set on the drive?

$fdisk -l   Device Boot	  Start		 End	  Blocks   Id  System/dev/sdh1   *		   1		 481	 3863601	b  W95 FAT32

I have noticed that for some combinations of usb sticks and computers that you have to try different options until you find one that works.Sometimes USB-HDD works, other times I have to select USB-Floppy, USB-Zip, or USB-CDRom. Sometimes nothing works, but it will boot on a different computer.Did you ever try Unetbootin?

[V.T. Eric Layton]

@ Josh... we'll see. Let me try the Win 7 thing first.@ Jim... Yup. Boot flag set A-OK. Also, have tried Unetbootin, with exact same results... NO OPERATING SYSTEM FOUND.

[burninbush]

@ Josh... we'll see. Let me try the Win 7 thing first.

FWIW, I have win7 on a year-old Toshiba laptop here, and bootinst.bat works fine to several different usbsticks and a couple different SD cards. When I do that, I'm using an admin account, open a cmd window, cd to the \boot subdir on the usb device, and run bootinst.bat. But ... your situation doesn't sound like a slax issue, you aren't even getting the syslinux prompt [syslinux is what bootinst.bat uses as a boot util to load the slax kernel]. Do you have a cdrom drive on the laptop? Slax has a boot-from-usb cd iso that is setup so it reads vmlinuz and initrd.gz from the cd, then gets the rest [/slax] from the usbstick. That might be a useful 2nd check of your hardware.

[Frank Golden]

FWIW, I have win7 on a year-old Toshiba laptop here, and bootinst.bat works fine to several different usbsticks and a couple different SD cards. When I do that, I'm using an admin account, open a cmd window, cd to the \boot subdir on the usb device, and run bootinst.bat. But ... your situation doesn't sound like a slax issue, you aren't even getting the syslinux prompt [syslinux is what bootinst.bat uses as a boot util to load the slax kernel]. Do you have a cdrom drive on the laptop? Slax has a boot-from-usb cd iso that is setup so it reads vmlinuz and initrd.gz from the cd, then gets the rest [/slax] from the usbstick. That might be a useful 2nd check of your hardware.

Eric has a DVD\CD drive and his BIOS has a feature key that brings up a boot order menu that allows the correct boot device to be selected.Eric are you sure you are booting the flashdrive?Do you have another USB device plugged in that may be confusing your computer?If I have my external drive plugged in and on when I try to boot my USB live distros I get the same error message.BTW, that would be a PITA to need the SLAX CD in the DVD\CD player to boot from the USB flash drive.As for formatting the drive to Fat 23 in Win 7 it's worth a try. Edited December 5, 2010 by Frank Golden

[ChipDoc]

Do you have another USB device plugged in that may be confusing your computer?

Now THIS is an issue which caused me to reinstall several operating systems. I have several outboard storage drives. If one of them is plugged in when I boot, I get MBR errors since there isn't a bootable section on any of them. It took me almost a week to realize what was going on and stop reinstalling!

[amenditman]

Now THIS is an issue which caused me to reinstall several operating systems. I have several outboard storage drives. If one of them is plugged in when I boot, I get MBR errors since there isn't a bootable section on any of them. It took me almost a week to realize what was going on and stop reinstalling!

I have seen the exact same problem with USB drives confusing the BIOS as to where it's supposed to get the boot files from.As soon as I unplug the extra buggers, the boot works just fine.I think Frank's onto something.

[jimg]

I had forgotten about an external drive causing this.Just for fun, dump the boot sector to a file

$ dd if=/dev/sdh of=boot.bin bs=512 count=1

Substitute the info for your usb stick, if=/dev/sdb, if=/dev/sdc. etc in the command above.See if you find the exact error message NO OPERATING SYSTEM FOUND in the boot sector. If not, you aren't booting from that usb stick as this message should come from the boot sector.A random usb stick of mine shows:

$ strings -n10 boot.binMissing operating system.Multiple active partitions.Operating system load error.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

@ burbinbush... The next time I boot up Win 7 on the laptop, I'll give this a try. Thanks. @ Frank... Nope. Nothing else plugged into USB when I try to boot that stick. By the way, on my BIOS boot options, I have USB Floppy, USB Zipdrive, USB CDROM, and USB HDD. The only one that stops for a moment to attempt to boot (and reads from the flash stick (it has an led on it) is USB Zipdrive. That's the one I always use to boot USB sticks on this system. On the laptop, there's only one choice... USB Flash Memory Device.@ Jim... Ah, the handy-dandy dd command. I might tinker around with that a bit and see what happens. I really do suspect that it's some sort of boot sector issue; I have all along.The oddest thing about all this is that I can use my old tutorial on any old or brand new flash stick to try to install the older version of SLAX (the one I had working), and it fails also. I haven't made any hardware changes on my system since installing the old one a year ago. I haven't made any major operating system changes either; still running the old Slack64-13 that was on here when I loaded that USB stick the last time. Odd... very odd.

[abarbarian]

Did you try to Boot an Nuke it ?

[V.T. Eric Layton]

No, but I have Hirens CD and others that have the same type tools on them as Darik's. Bottom line: if you can't wipe/reformat with fdisk/parted, there's an issue somewhere. I CAN wipe and reformat using fdisk/parted with no problems. All the flash drives work fine for data. They just won't boot. SLAX's boot command is NOT properly writing to the boot sector of the flash drive, for some reason; same with DSL. Who knows? I may go to my brother's house and try to install SLAX using his system (Ubuntu 10.04) and see what happens.

[Guest LilBambi]

What are the manufacturers, size of the USB drives?

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Two are Super Talent 2GB. One is a Kingston Data Traveler 2GB.

[securitybreach]

Two are Super Talent 2GB. One is a Kingston Data Traveler 2GB.

Hmm never heard of Super Talent but I have a couple of Kingston drives that work beautifully. This is definitely an odd issue

[burninbush]

BTW, that would be a PITA to need the SLAX CD in the DVD\CD player to boot from the USB flash drive.As for formatting the drive to Fat 23 in Win 7 it's worth a try.

Yes, if you aren't using a vfat filesystem then that might be a reason for syslinux to not work. The Slax usb-boot-cd serves a purpose on older machines on which the bios has no provision at all to boot from usb, yet you'd like the loading speed of usb better than a cd -- which is pretty slow for any livecd product. Vmlinuz includes usb code which does know how to read/write a usbstick even on those older computers with no usb provision in bios. Booting that way also eliminates the requirement to modify the MBR on a machine on which you want to run a frugal [poor man's] install of some linux livecd -- I do that here on the win7 laptop, booting from a usbstick or SD card, but getting the rest of whichever linux distro from the hard disk, at much better speed than either cdrom or usb device. Again, though, Eric's machine(s) are not even reading syslinux -- so it isn't a slax problem. I was thinking of the usb-boot-cd as a diagnostic -- would give a closer view of where his problem lies. @ Eric ... I wonder if you have looked at =every= bios setup item, for usb-related? My older desktops have questions about enabling usb-dos-mode and usb-legacy mode. If it once worked but now doesn't then that suggests something has changed on your hardware. There's also the possibility of going to a full frugal install -- copy the cd [/boot and /slax] onto your win7 hard disk, and rename a couple of windows files so grub4dos gets control first -- so you can start a linux, or chain into your win7 install. And of course, test this by making a usbstick work on a different computer -- if it then still won't boot on your usual machines, you'll at least know where the problem lies.

[Guest LilBambi]

I have been looking all over and when folks have this problem, it is just plain frustrating.Here are a few places that might give some help or confirmation of issue for others so you don't feel so alone:USB boot, no boot, boot, no boot, boot, no boot (Slax forum)How to fix a dead flash drive (or USB key) (n#)Direct link to HP Drive Key Boot Utility page (45MB)problems in a Kingston datatraveler 2g (Slax forum)Link to Hacktolive.org Cd2usb wiki page - might work to test ability to boot from it in another OSIf all else fails:Dual Booting Slax Linux and BartPE (Windows) from a USB Thumbdrive (UFD) (irongeek.com) - maybe some help here?or here How to Make a CD that Boots Slax from a USB Drive (ehow.com )

[Guest LilBambi]

Sure you also saw this one too: My SLAX Creator (Alternate USB Flash Drive install Method)But thought I would post it.

[securitybreach]

@burninbush Good suggestions.@LilBambi Nice set of links, hopefully one of them will help to figure out what is going on with Eric's drives.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

@ Eric ... I wonder if you have looked at =every= bios setup item, for usb-related? My older desktops have questions about enabling usb-dos-mode and usb-legacy mode. If it once worked but now doesn't then that suggests something has changed on your hardware. There's also the possibility of going to a full frugal install -- copy the cd [/boot and /slax] onto your win7 hard disk, and rename a couple of windows files so grub4dos gets control first -- so you can start a linux, or chain into your win7 install. And of course, test this by making a usbstick work on a different computer -- if it then still won't boot on your usual machines, you'll at least know where the problem lies.

I've never even considered looking at my BIOS settings because this same flash drive with an older version of SLAX on it, installed using my method previously mentioned in this thread, worked fine up until a couple weeks ago when I decided to install the newer version of SLAX on it. Also, since it was booting fine on my laptop machine before, and now does not, was another reason to think that it's not the systems. It's the way that boot sector is getting written, I believe. Something's not right.The main reason I have this SLAX installation on at thumb drive is for use to fix other folks' computers. It's a great portable operating system.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

*sigh*I've seen/tried most of those remedies, Fran. Will look again, though. Thanks.

[Guest LilBambi]

The main reason I have this SLAX installation on at thumb drive is for use to fix other folks' computers. It's a great portable operating system.

OK, now THAT opens a whole NEW area of possibility of problems.Sinowal/Mebroot/MBR Rootkit infectionNew Alureon Bios Rootkit un-removable (technibble)Hiren's BootCD 12.0 - All in One Bootable CD which has all these utilities

[burninbush]

The main reason I have this SLAX installation on at thumb drive is for use to fix other folks' computers. It's a great portable operating system. >Eric++++++++++++++Have you looked at RIPlinux lately? I mention it because he offers a completely different way of making a usbstick bootable with RIP; you just use dd to directly copy the rip.iso file to the usbstick --# dd if=rip.iso of=/dev/sdh. I tried it here and it worked for RIP, but the same routine then would not work for a slax iso. He gives a hint how to then use the rest of the usbstick; sfdisk to repartition the usbstick after-the-fact. There's a fair chance that if you can make the stick bootable to RIP then you could add slax to the same stick -- edit the boot config file [syslinux.cfg?] that RIP uses to also point to slax.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

@ Fran... Huh? Rootkit? Where? On what? The flash drive (even the brand new ones out o the package) or both my systems?@ burninbush... Yeah. RIP is pretty cool. I have it on CD. I haven't attempted to run it from flash drive, though.

[Guest LilBambi]

@ Fran... Huh? Rootkit? Where? On what? The flash drive (even the brand new ones out o the package) or both my systems?

I am suggesting, not saying, that it is a possibility.If you used it to boot a system with one of these rootkits, you could have brought it home with you.But it is only something to look at as a last resort.Best to see if any other Linux OS will in fact boot from it first. If it can, you can pretty much lay to rest that issue, and determine that it is Slax as noted on some of the postings I posted earlier.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Well, it was a thought. I run chkrootkit and rkhunter every month. No issues.

[Guest LilBambi]

Well, it was a thought. I run chkrootkit and rkhunter every month. No issues.

Great!Did you read the articles on those rootkits. Are you sure chkrootkit and rkhunter are actually looking for the rootkits I linked to?BTW: Not sure if folks realize this but only some rootkits are actually known. There are ones out there that are not being detected in rootkit finder programs because they are not aware of them enough to do detection on them. At least that is what I have read...not sure how true it is. But the source, which I can't remember off the top of my head was a reliable one; but it was like two years ago.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

I don't know, to be honest. I just run 'em and read the output and off I go...

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Alrighty then, folks...I'm posting this message from Firefox in SLAX from a thumb drive boot on my laptop. YAY! Here's how I finally did it:1. Burned the .iso that I had previously downloaded to a cd.2. Booted my desktop system with the cd.3. Mounted the usb thumb drive (the original one that I had SLAX on before).4. Mounted the cd from within SLAX and copied /boot and /slax to the thumb drive.5. Added my gparted.lzm file to /slax/modules (adds gparted application to SLAX).6. As root in the terminal, navigated to the /boot directory on the thumb drive and performed the following:

# chmod +x bootinst.sh# ./bootinst.sh

7. The above commands make the bootinst.sh executable and runs it; writing the necessary boot info into the thumb drive's MBR.8. Unmount everything and remove thumb drive.9. Test by booting thumb drive in laptop. SUCCESS, d*mmit! :w00t:Credit to THIS site for the method that I used to do this.Weeeee... Wee... Wee... Weeeee...