Booting fom Live CD (Page 2 of 2)

OK simply this - when you boot from a device, you are booting into an operating system. In this case, the stick boots into DOS. Unless you have some clever DOS program in there which somehow emulates the CD boot into Linux which GParted needs, it will simply boot into DOS and stop there. And of course, it being the wrong operating system, you can't actually run any of the software copied because it is the wrong operating system.

Larry, don't worry about it. I have read the instructions on the LiveCD from Bootable USB Stick forum  and they make perfect sense. But to put the OS onto the stick, I need to be in Linux and that PC is busy for some days lol This isn't a LiveCD issue - you can't create a bootable "anything" without a basic operating system to create it!

OK. The partitions which are showing to LiveCD version on this particular PC are (figures from WinXPPro Disk Manager):

HD0 (200GB)
--------------
1. NTFS Vista Ultimate Partition. 61.38GB (Free 52.1GB - I haven't migrated yet)
2. FAT32 WinXP Pro "clone" (it was empty space when I made that first test - I just created it from LiveCD 0.3.4-2 see below) 61.38GB (37.7GB free)
3. 63.53GB Unallocated
4. FAT16 DOS 8MB (5.5MB free)

HD1 (80GB)
--------------
1. FAT32 WinXP Pro (the one I cloned) 38.15GB (free 4.92GB)
2. FAT32 Win98SE 3.82GB (free 3.31GB)
3. 30.86GB Unallocated
4. FAT32 Win98SE 3.82GB (free 3.12GB) (this was a clone test in RPM some days ago)
5. FAT16 DOS 30MB (free 27.5MB)

My point about speed was that Linux showed it's true form in booting so quickly from that CD but then the scanning of the partitions etc took a long time (15 minutes or so) compared ONLY with RPM which takes a few microseconds. On the other hand, I am assuming that the GParted scanning does some checks when RPM does little except read the partition table, MBR etc so my comment was probably misleading.

As far as speed is concerned, the 38.15GB FAT32 WinXP Pro partition which I cloned/resized was completed in MINUTES compared with RPM cloning the same partition from HD1 to HD0 (same copy destination etc) a few days ago which took HOURS. AND GParted increased the size in that time. So VERY good on speed for the actions!

So first test is great - booted provided I set VESA manually and don't accept default boot.

Cloning of a large partition from one hard disk to another and increasing size done quickly and, as far as I can tell accurately.

Of course, it being WinXP, it won't boot despite all the tricks you (and others) suggest including the registry branch delete.

There is one other problem which makes no sense so I have to study it. After the copy was made to an increased size partition on the other disk, if I boot into DOS and inspect the partitions with RPM, they are great including the new one. And I can boot normally into WinXP on the old partition - again no problem. And all my partitions are there.

However, when I boot into DOS from a CD, I now can't get either of the FAT32 partitions to show up. C: is accepted but I can't VOL or DIR it without an error. The partition is correct, but GParted did something unknown to my partition table or something. It doesn't stop me using the partitions, but I can't access them in DOS now! I am working on finding out what it has done - any ideas would help, but remember I have to work in DOS, Windows or the LiveCD for now. My first try will be to check thoroughly if there is any change showing in RPM.

"Only"? This from sourceforge:

Package Release (date)  Filename Size (bytes)  Downloads Architecture Type
gparted-livecd 
Latest
gparted-livecd-0.3.4-2 (2007-03-12 16:24)   gparted-livecd-0.3.4-2.iso  Mirror  52662272 4890 i386 .iso

What am I testing for? I can't get info out of GParted yet because I don't know how to direct a file to save - when I tried to save the Report at the end of cloning, it would only let me see the CD (yeah, and I don't know Linux yet )

Well, if you have a Vista or WindowsXP install CD handy, when you boot from them, the line comes up something like "Boot from CD/DVD...." and the ... grows for 5 seconds. If you don't hit a key in that time, the boot goes to the next item in BIOS to boot.

Again, when I create bootable CDs, I put in a Boot Menu which REPLACES the BIOS prompt completely but shows a timed menu, for example:

1. Boot from Hard Disk.
2. Boot from CD.

If you hit nothing, after the timeout, it goes to hard disk and boots normally. If you hit 2 or arrow down and hit Enter, it boots from CD where there is often another menu for different options.

Whichever is the Default, my point was only that it is "better" (opinion lol) if users can leave the CD in the drive and, if they do an unattended boot, their normal boot will take place. Think about it. Even if you disagree, it is better to let the user choose instead of having to pop the CD in and out!

If they don't know what partitions are, then aspirion won't do it cos they are going to think they need a new computer afterwards No, seriously, the thing is that when I DO work on partitions, I work on them a lot for some days often. But in between times, I want to use the PC normally. I leave the CD in through that time.

You might remember that, with a Vista installation or when migrating to bigger/newer hard disks, even some of the ordinary users (who never knew what a partition is) are going  to try to follow a step-by-step way to "move" their operating systems. If you don't believe me, scan through some C-net forums and see the advice being given! But not all of them are going to pay $100 or so for a partition manager (which often won't work anyway) so they come to GParted or RPM  etc.

No. Maybe I am jumping in at the wrong time testing this. But look, today I burned my first LiveCD CD and I already cloned and grew a partition from one physical device to another! You already filled some of that gap and made me hungry to learn more about how to do the other things!

And yes, it's already enjoyable. It did a great job. Now I need to understand what else it did - but if I didn't want to work at it on my own, I wouldn't have got this far!

By the way - now I have found the way to boot, maybe after you note that I had to F2 and type vesa rather than let it default, I think the rest of this is on the wrong forum thread

OK Congratulations GParted teams!

gparted-livecd-0.3.4-2.iso successfully booted (F2, selected vesa then keymap/language defaults).

Successfully cloned WinXPPro 38.15GB partition from FIRST partition on SECOND hard disk (HD1) to SECOND partition on FIRST hard disk (HD0) and resized it to 61.38GB. Then succeeded in getting WinXP Pro booting from there - in other words, moved the OS partition leaving the original as a full backup.

The method relies heavily on the fact that I use XOSL exclusively as my boot loader - it allows activating partitions on the fly and also allows "Swap Disks" which all means that I can always have my currently loaded OS on C: and it can be on the second hard disk or any other device and still load any OS. (It can also selectively hide OS partitions on boot.)

Thanks Larry. Two things that might need to be added to the Windows Informations (sic) notes in the Info page (useful reading while cloning but a little late as I had not caught up with the documentation!):

1. In addition to the Windows Registry fix, the Boot.ini file will need changing if the partition you are moving XP to is not the same as the other one (for instance, I needed to edit (1) to (2) to make it work in this instance).

2. After cloning was completed, I rebooted to DOS to check the partitions before allowing Windows to get its hands on things. The partitions were all present but the new cloned WinXP Pro on C: produced a filesystem error. Studying things after I cloned again, I noticed that although the original partition was boot (active), LBA, the copy was only boot (active). By setting the LBA flag in GParted, I solved the problem. Thanks. Strange thing was that RPM had identified it correctly as FAT32 LBA the first time I cloned it!

Incidentally - well, not so incidentally when I think about it! - speeds are wonderful.

Once the LiveCD boot completed to GParted, I timed it at 3 minutes to do the "scanning devices". This might seem long and it does it at other stages like on completion of regrowing etc. However, if that scanning is the reason why the copying/resizing is fast, it is excellent coding! The 38.15GB partition cloned in 21 minutes (amazingly fast!). It then took only 6 minutes to grow it to 61.38GB.

I don't know if it was longer when it went to unallocated space as the second time I left the target partition in place.

In any case, GPArted LiveCD is definitely in my arsenal for keeps and now it gets me working on getting Linux partitions on ALL the PCs here.

Thanks.

"Some kind of" is good. I am self-taught and my work is elsewhere. But starting with an AppleIIe when they first came out, through Basic programming on that, I now write C++ Windows Programs in my spare time for fun :$ Most of what I do technically around partitions etc is solving problems for a network of people/small businesses and testing things which come up - this which all forces me to be very Windows oriented. I have been promising myself for years to get around to doing something more with Linux than have it one of the boxes when we test to see what interactions there are, but you may have noticed - no-one ever sends you a Christmas or birthday gift consisting of more time!

Funny that - many people have trouble getting Win98 to close down even now

Well, I don't either. I was only testing  GParted because we have so many people who want to migrate their WinXP systems to a new disk, larger disk, different partition etc. Also now, they want to have their new Vista upgrade side-by-side with their old WinXP.

If you mean writing a step-by-step instruction how to do it, I will work on that when the immediate pressure to complete the remainder of the testing lets up! I'll post a link to it wherever I can find the problem being posted including your links.

The problem I have found with many of the forums is that there are people saying "it can't be done" and the discussion (and further trying) was stifled and then the trolls move in or something. There was a logical argument that Microsoft made it that way with Windows XP because otherwise you could easily produce an ISO of a partition with instructions how to put it in a partition the same size and then move/resize it and have a working Windows. That's dumb as there are so many slipstreamed pirate copies of the OS out there which would be an easier way to get a new partition for most people! It is interesting (if I understand it correctly) that when you move a WinXP partition as I did, you have to activate the product but if you move a pirate WinXP partition, it just moves! (I'll have to try it sometime when there is a LOT more time, just for interest because I have a feeling that before Vista, Microsoft made it EASIER for the pirates rather than harder!)

The other problem is that the forums tend to point at very expensive software which, as far as I have tested, doesn't actually solve the problem! But people who have paid a lot of money for software which they like start defending it and the logic of the discussion/advice gets lost somewhere.

Have you tried/studied/used RPM (Ranish Partition Manager) and XOSL? You would be interested I am certain! Strange how the BEST software is often free. Maybe it is simply because the authors and others care more about it!

Now, one final thing. Do you know why the LBA flag was removed from the copy of the partition? Is that a bug which needs reporting or did I misunderstand something about GParted? It REALLY messed things up and for a user who was not so sure that he wasn't really breaking anything, it would have meant it was all a waste of time - possibly having to restore a complete backup of two OS partitions! (I knew nothing had really been lost as is the case with a lot of partition work!)

Thanks "pour encourager les autres" especially me

Let me know whether that LBA flag thing is a bug and if so I'll report it.

Oh! But I had one other question for you:

If I understand the setup of the LiveCD, once GParted starts, I can open a "Terminal" window and then I am in a Linux Command window - something like a DOS command window? If that is right, surely I could use that to put the Linux system onto the USB stick. I mean GParted shows that the USB stick is accessible and the Live CD has installed a basic version of Linux.

If I am right, this would mean that people WITHOUT ANY LINUX partition could create the LiveUSB-stick from the LiveCD alone.

If you feel like saving me some time (because I don't have enough to study up Linux for the moment), could you start me off how, from inside GParted in the Terminal (I assume that is also the BASH I get into), I can switch away from /root (which is either RAM or the CD or I don't understand enough how Linux works yet lol) to be able to give the commands needed (in your step-by-step how-to about USB stick) to create the system on the USB stick. If I do that, I can easily come up with the step-by-step for people who do NOT have Linux to create a GParted Live-USB stick. Let me know if you can, otherwise it will have to wait until I am able to spend a night or two reading about Linux commands.

That depends what you mean by "accessible". In Windows (or DOS), I can see, copy etc the files on the CD. I don't even need the CD - if I simply take any ISO, I can see, copy etc ALL the files in Windows using Nero (or similar) and with Isobuster (or similar) I can see all the files including those in the boot cat.

So I can copy all the files onto a USB stick any time I like. But that will not make the stick bootable into Linux.

Thanks for the rest. I won't do anything with a command called "fdisk" until I have read it up, which I have started doing. If you know anything about DOS fdisk, you will understand why! If you partitioned your hard disks manually from Ranish, you will understand why TWICE!

I nearly have enough to try that. One quick question though about the access to the disks other than "root". If I understand this so far, when I am in LiveCD version of GParted, I am working in a Linux environment (in a BASH shell) . That environment came from the CD so I am assuming for the moment that the "root" is the root of the CD (or does "root" mean something entirely different in Windows and Linux?). That means that when I have completed a GParted action and I have the option to save the log file, I need to save it somewhere OTHER than root because the CD is of course read-only (naturally, this will NOT apply when I get my US stick up and running as that is not read-only and it has plenty of space).

So when a user gets to the end of the action(s) in GParted, and he clicks to browse to another location to save the file, how does he get to somewhere on one of the hard disk partitions from that "Save" and then "Browse" dialog?

Meanwhile, I am coming up with a "Linux-less" method of creating the Live-USB GParted. I know that any of you Linux users will already know how to do it, but it helps to get some step-by-step instructions for non-Linux users which will encourage them (me! lol) to become Linux users.

Back to your instructions, Larry....

Nope. You are still misunderstanding. Any DOS user can create a bootable USB stick (if their BIOS allows it or if they can boot it using a loader like XOSL) by formatting a partition on the stick with FAT system and with the paramaters to "transfer the system files" to the disk. Just as you have a command "syslinux", DOS users can use "format g: /s" (if the USB is drive G: for instance) where the "/s" paramater tells the format program to transfer the DOS system files to the stick (which is what makes it bootable). They could also include the parameter "/V:PARTNAME" which would make that partition have a name "PARTNAME".

Now if you do it in Windows, it will depend VERY much which Windows version you are using as each of them 98SE, Me, XP etc has a different variation of the way it handles DOS. But in all case, Windows has access to its own DOS system files. It does NOT have access to the commands which you use like "syslinux" and even if you tried to use one in Windows or DOS it would simply fail to recognise it.

That is why it is called an Operating System. Without a VERY unusual software shell, one operating system cannot render a partition bootable in another operating system (yes, I know someone will probably shout that I am wrong, but I am talking about the average mortal, not the specialist!)

So my aim is simply to use the LiveCD boot into BASH, then use the Terminal window, which being run under the Linux operating system, can now use Linux commands like "syslinux".

I _think_ you have given me enough to get me to operate that on my USB stick, but I am reading it up as I don't want to have to do yet another backup/restore because I made my Vista partition bootable into Linux without realising it!

We'll unwin yet I shall send a bugzilla report about the LBA mode flag.

Someone, please let me know if you have an answer to the question I have made bold above. Thanks.