Windows 10 boot MX-23 ISO from a partition w/o using a USB (this thread was split from another thread)

[Stuart_M]

I found a way to boot up to a Live MX-23.2 ISO file on a Windows computer without using a USB Flash Drive, etc. MX-23.2 was downloaded and moved to an empty Windows FAT32 partition, and from there I booted up to it and then installed it.

The above results in Windows being able to dualboot, in this case to Windows or MX-23.

The only thing I was not able to do was to install MX-23.2 to an empty FAT32 Windows partition on the same drive that the Live MX-23 was on. GParted correctly showed the Window's drive along with all the partitions, including the empty FAT32 20GB partition I wanted to install MX-23 on, but the MX-23 installer did not show any drive or partitions. None. Zero. I was stopped then and there. I suspect that it is not possible to install MX Linux on the same drive that the Live MX Linux is on, or do I have that wrong? I still have the test setup so I'm ready to test if anyone has any suggestions.

This is how I did it, in detail and in steps so others, hopefully, will be able to reproduce the same good results.

1. I started with an empty (unallocated) 250GB SSD and installed Windows-10 Pro on it with a USB Flash Drive.
2. Using Windows Disk Manager I shrank the primary (C:\) partition 40GB and created two 20GB FAT32 partitions (I know, that's overkill):
   
   One partition is to hold the MX-23.2 ISO file which will later be extracted there, naming the partition "MX".
   
   The other (empty) 20GB FAT32 partition I named "MX-LINUX" and is to be used for the MX-23.2 installation, but that never happened - see the end of this post.
   
   Note that all the file name letters are upper-case. I wanted to name it "MX-Linux" but Windows did not allow lower-case letters (I edited fehlix's grub menu because of that change - see the end of Step 5).
3. Download Grub2Win https://sourceforge.net/projects/grub2win/files/ and install it.
4. Extract the ISO file (MX-23.2_x64.iso) that was put in the newly created FAT32 partition. There are many ways to extract an ISO file but sadly I did not see any on the newly installed Windows-10. I downloaded WinZip which will appear as an option when right-clicking on the ISO file (Linux does this easily by default using several different ways such as right-clicking in Thunar or running 7z x <file_name.iso>, etc.).
5. Now a grub menu is needed to select the Live MX-23 when booting up Windows. This is done using the Grub2Win bootup window.
   
   What follows is mostly from fehlix's Post #19 (original thread: viewtopic.php?p=762722#p762722). In order to boot into the "Frugal Installation", put the text from the below code window into the grub file that Grub2Win uses, which is located at C:\grub2\grub. Open that CFG grub file with a text editor (Window's Notepad) and put the text at the end (bottom) of the file.
   
   This is text to use (obtained from fehlix in his Post #19, original thread: viewtopic.php?p=762722#p762722):

   Code: Select all

   menuentry "MX 23.2 Libretto manual Frugal Install" {
     insmod part_msdos
     insmod fat
     search --no-floppy --set=root --label MX-LINUX
     linux /antiX/vmlinuz bdir=antiX blab=MX-LINUX quiet splasht nosplash
     initrd /antiX/initrd.gz
   }

   
   NOTE: Fehlix originally used "MX-linux" and "MX-Linux" in the above text. That was from his Post #19 (original thread: viewtopic.php?p=762722#p762722) but I changed both occurrences to all upper-case because Windows would always change to upper-case when I used lower-case. For some strange reason, one of the days of my testing I was in fact able to use lower-case letters but the day I got it working Windows would not allow lower-case letters.
6. Now when booting up Windows there will be a Grub2Win window giving you options on what you want to boot up. See the below image with "MX-23.2 Libretto manual FrugalInstall" at the bottom, without the pretty icon to its left (the order, priority, and default of the options can all be configured in Grub2Win).
   Grub2Win_grub.jpg
   I selected MX-23 and was quickly booted into MX-23.2 and everything looked okay.....until I tried installing it into the newly created (empty) 20GB FAT32 partition. The MX Installer did not display the single drive (SSD) or any of the several partitions so there was nothing to install into because the Drive/Partition window was empty. That stopped the installation there. Note that GParted slowed the single Windows drive along with all the partitions correctly.
7. I then plugged in a 500GB SSD into my motherboards USB port (via a USAP adapter) and was able to successfully make a MX-23.2 installation there.

...
...The target device contains hardware and physical components from external media ports. ...

The above is the original posters Post #9 (original thread: viewtopic.php?p=762637#p762637). I'm not sure (getting any details of the computer system used, etc. is like pulling teeth), but it sounds like the original poster wants to make an installation on another computer when he said "target device contains hardware and physical components". Is the device a computer? Mainframe? Notebook?

But the OP does state the "target device" (whatever that actually is) will receive something from the "external media ports". So that "something" could be power, signal, data, clocking, who knows? I immediately thought the "media ports" would be USB ports, but maybe it's serial or parallel ports or something else. Maybe it's fiber optics.

In any event, I was able to boot up to a live MX-23.2 and make an installation onto an separate SSD which was connected a motherboard USB 3.0 port using a USAP adapter. I have no doubt the same could be done with an internal SSD connected with a SATA cable.

[DukeComposed]

I suspect that it is not possible to install MX Linux on the same drive that the Live MX Linux is on, or do I have that wrong? I still have the test setup so I'm ready to test if anyone has any suggestions.

I thought I solved this in an earlier post in this thread. Consider the "toram" option.

[Stuart_M]

Maybe I'm missing something but that link to your 2 February 2024 post (original thread Post #64:viewtopic.php?p=764309#p764309) is talking about EasyBCD, which I am not using and have no interest in using, at least not at this point.

Unless I get specific instructions I'll have to read up on the "toram" options and how that would be incorporated into the scenario that I am using. Or perhaps there is a better solution. I'll investigate a tad. This is only for my curiosity.

[fehlix]

The only thing I was not able to do was to install MX-23.2 to an empty FAT32 Windows partition on the same drive that the Live MX-23 was on.

Thanks for following this up.
To install the live(=frugal) booted system,
* you may need to add a live boot parameter "toram"
this would make the the partition/drive you booted from accessible to the MX Installer
Also make sure e.g in geparted no partition is mounted on the boot drive.
And perhaps shutdown Windows properly, to avoid any lock stated of the by Windows used partitions.

The "MX Installer" requires to get convinced to actual allow the partition to be used located on the boot drive:
by using the option "--brave"

So you would run installer this way:

Code: Select all

sudo minstall --brave

For UEFI system just select the existing ESP, ( or prepare an 2nd ESP/EFI partition to be used for MX, to avoid touching the ESP used by WIndows)
for legacy BIOS/MBR system better not install to MBR (otherwise Windows would not boot anymore),
so to be on the safe side easier might be to choose GRUB location target the PBR (Partition Boot Record/Sector) of the root-partition or boot-partition (if separate).
add the installed/add MX Linux boot entry directly to GRUB2win's grub config.
PS: Added a note about 2nd ESP tp be used for MX Installation.

[fehlix]

Maybe I'm missing something but that link to your 2 February 2024 post is talking about EasyBCD, which I am not using and have no interest in using, at least not at this point.

Unless I get specific instructions I'll have to read up on the "toram" options and how that would be incorporated into the scenario that I am using. Or perhaps there is a better solution. I'll investigate a tad. This is only for my curiosity.

toram loads the whole linuxfs (the squashed linux live system) into the RAM,
so you may need probably a bit more I guess min is like 3-4 GB better more.
PS: I havn't tried without toram, b/c the installer would like to create a root-partition
and by this change partition table entries, which may create issues.
First partition table principle: Never touch/change partition table entries with mounted partitions.

[Stuart_M]

Now Windows no longer consistently recognizes the Grub2Win grub menu and instead boots straight to Windows 10. The first few tests of booting up to the Live MX-23.2 ISO in Windows were fine. I would re-boot Windows and the Grub2Win grub menu would appear. No problem.

When I reinstalled Windows10, shrunk the partition to create two 20GB partitions, installed Grub2Win (again), and put the extracted MX-23.2 ISO file in its separate partition, the Grub2Win grub menu appeared on bootup like it did before.

I tried to install via the Terminal using sudo minstall --brave but got the same result as before - no device or partitions were recognized in the initial stage of the installation. See the below Screenshots:

The MX-Installer at the step where the drives and partitions would be shown (clicking on "Next" just states the installer needs a minimum of 7.7GB [if memory serves], but none is available so the process stops):

Installer_no_partitions_listed.png

GParted from the Live MX-23 showing the partitions in the Windows SSD. The blue highlighted line is partition sda5 which is where the extracted MX-23.2 ISO file is located (sda6 or "MX-23" is where I want to install MX-23:

gparted_showing_partitions.png

This is the terminal output of sudo minstall --brave for what it's worth (probably nothing...):

Code: Select all

demo@mx1:~
$ sudo minstall --brave
QStandardPaths: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set, defaulting to '/tmp/runtime-root'
Installer version: 24.01.01mx23
<< void MInstall::startup() >>
Detect EFI: 64
Exec #1: uname -m
uname -m
Exit #1: 0
Detect arch: "x86_64"
Live boot: BOOT_IMAGE=/antiX/vmlinuz bdir=antiX blab=MX-LINUX quiet splasht nosplash
Check MD5: /live/boot-dev/antiX/initrd.gz
Check MD5: /live/boot-dev/antiX/linuxfs
Check MD5: /live/boot-dev/antiX/vmlinuz
Exec #2: du -scb /live/aufs/boot
du -scb /live/aufs/boot
Exit #2: 0
Basic image: 6338406400 true "/live/boot-dev/antiX/linuxfs.info"
Source inodes: 294730 Assumed block size: 4096
Minimum space: 93165586 (boot), 7545620480 (root)
Exec #3: find -L /usr/share/zoneinfo/posix -mindepth 2 -type f -printf %P\n
find -L /usr/share/zoneinfo/posix -mindepth 2 -type f -printf %P\n
Exit #3: 0
Bash #4: guess-hwclock
guess-hwclock
Exit #4: 0
Bash #5: locale -a | grep -Ev '^(C|POSIX)\.?' | grep -E 'utf8|UTF-8'
locale -a | grep -Ev '^(C|POSIX)\.?' | grep -E 'utf8|UTF-8'
Exit #5: 0
Bash #6: ls -1 /home | grep -Ev '^(lost\+found|demo|snapshot)$' | grep -q '[a-zA-Z0-9]'
ls -1 /home | grep -Ev '^(lost\+found|demo|snapshot)$' | grep -q '[a-zA-Z0-9]'
Exit #6: 1
check for possible snapshot: false
Bash #7: dpkg -s samba | grep '^Status.*ok.*' | sed -e 's/.*ok //'
dpkg -s samba | grep '^Status.*ok.*' | sed -e 's/.*ok //'
Exit #7: 0
Exec #8: lsblk -T -bJo TYPE,NAME,PATH,UUID,ROTA,DISC-GRAN,SIZE,PHY-SEC,PTTYPE,PARTTYPENAME,FSTYPE,FSVER,LABEL,MODEL,PARTFLAGS
lsblk -T -bJo TYPE,NAME,PATH,UUID,ROTA,DISC-GRAN,SIZE,PHY-SEC,PTTYPE,PARTTYPENAME,FSTYPE,FSVER,LABEL,MODEL,PARTFLAGS
Exit #8: 0
Exec #9: parted -lm
parted -lm
Exit #9: 0
Bash #10: lsblk -T -bJo TYPE,NAME,PATH,UUID,ROTA,DISC-GRAN,SIZE,PHY-SEC,FSTYPE,LABEL /dev/mapper/*
lsblk -T -bJo TYPE,NAME,PATH,UUID,ROTA,DISC-GRAN,SIZE,PHY-SEC,FSTYPE,LABEL /dev/mapper/*
SErr #10: "lsblk: /dev/mapper/control: not a block device\n"
Exit #10: 32

I was going to try again using GParted to ensure the partitions were not mounted. This is the second time I booted up with this new Windows installation and now the Grub2Win boot menu no longer appears. The below message is displayed after launching the Grub2Win application:

This is the error Grub2Win shows when I return to Windows and click on the Grub2Win launch icon. Predictably, it doesn't fix the problem :

Grub2Win_error_screenshot.PNG

So after hours trying to get the Grub2Win boot menu back (uninstalling Grub2Win, removing MX-23.2 extracted ISO from its partition, ensuring the boot order was correctly set for Grub2Win in the BIOS [it didn't even appear to be set], etc.), I decided it would be much faster to just reinstall Windows along with the other stuff needed. Then I'll have at least one more easy test after ensuring all the partitions are unmounted before trying to install. (I also disable Windows "Fast Startup" in Settings but that doesn't really matter because "Restart" bypasses the "Fast Startup" issue.)

I am not familiar with "toram". I know it was said above to "add a live boot parameter 'toram'", but where exactly is this put when making an installation from a Live MX Linux? In the command when launching the installer from the Terminal?

Should I continue to use sudo minstall --brave? Would "toram" replace "--brave"? Would "--brave" be used with "toram"?

[fehlix]

I am not familiar with "toram". I know it was said above to "add a live boot parameter 'toram'", but where exactly is this put when making an installation from a Live MX Linux? In the command when launching the installer from the Terminal?

Should I continue to use sudo minstall --brave? Would "toram" replace "--brave"? Use with "--brave"?

The live boot parameter need to go into the grub-menu entry,
this one like you have shown above:
So you add "toram" space separated to the "linux" command line,
so it looks like:

Code: Select all

menuentry "MX 23.2 Libretto manual Frugal Install" {
  insmod part_msdos
  insmod fat
  search --no-floppy --set=root --label MX-LINUX
  linux /antiX/vmlinuz bdir=antiX blab=MX-LINUX quiet splasht nosplash toram
  initrd /antiX/initrd.gz
}

Also I do always manually turn off in Xfce the automount feature after booted up, within removable drives&media settings.
and also unmounted any potentially automounted partition
( minstaller is supposed to unmount those, but I do this anyway manually before running the installer.)
The "--brave" parameter is needed, b/c minstall'er get the information what partition the liveSystem was booted from,
and in order to protect the live-boot drive to be overwritten by mistake it won't show this drive to the "normal" user.

[fehlix]

Now Windows no longer consistently recognizes the Grub2Win grub menu and instead boots straight to Windows 10. The first few tests of booting up to the Live MX-23.2 ISO in Windows were fine. I would re-boot Windows and the Grub2Win grub menu would appear. No problem.

As mentioner for UEFI better create an addtional extra ESP: within WINdows create at 100MB fat partition labeld e.g. ESP-MX followed by a partition to be used by root and in order to keep the extracted ISO create another fat one to hold the extracted ISO, maybe just 5GB.
So you keep the extracted ISO, in case you need to re-run the installer.
Now with toram within grub.cfg
and with sudo minstall --brave
do select the newly created ESP-MX to be used for ESP/EFI.
By this the the WIndows ESP won't be touched,
and the system would boot normaly from the WIndows ESP.
After finishing the installer, do boot into WIndows ( I always power/restart instead of reboot),
as it may or not would reconize some changes
in the parttiion table due to created files systems for root

Next power off from WIndows and restart In order to boot straight to the installed MX Linux:
Now to boot into MX by selecting from UEFI boot options list (F12?)
If that works: add also to grub2win a grub menu entry for booting to the installed MX:
Which would look similar to the above grub-entry you have shown, but using chainloader
to the grubx64.efi on the ESP-MX.
Maybe check first F10 section works.
If it works:
Post
efibootmgr -v
and
lsblk -f -o +PARTUUID
so we can construct a
menuentry to boot into MX from grub2win boot menu.

[Stuart_M]

...
As mentioner for UEFI better create an addtional extra ESP: within WINdows create at 100MB fat partition label ...
...

Oh man I wish you told me that 4 hours ago. Anyway it only took me about 2 minutes to figure out why there was no EFI drop-down option in the "Use for" field. The reason was because, although I had made a separate FAT32 partition for /boot/efi, I had made it 1GB thinking that the size didn't matter and I had a lot of space to use. After a night's sleep I realized my mistake in only creating one 20GB FAT32 empty partition the day before for today's installation, thinking okay, Linux will take care of the partitioning. Yea, right.

So I wound up making 4 empty FAT32 partitions, three for the yet-to-do MX-23.2 installation and one for the Live MX-23.2 extracted ISO file, again. The only way to resize the partitions would be to merge all of the partitions that are to the right of the largest partition (C:\) and just shrink them one-by-one in a right-to-left order.

Anyway, I got it all sorted out and was successful in installing to two partitions (EFI and root) as well as getting Grub2Win not only boot into the extracted MX-23.2 ISO file but also into the installed MX-23.2.

Right now I have Lunch and then a couple hours to compose a post which will detail precisely how I did it, along with a couple images. This post will be an addendum to my Post #82 (page 9) where I showed, step by step, how to boot into a Live MX-23.2 WITHOUT using a USB Flash Drive, etc.

Back in a few hours...

[Stuart_M]

viewtopic.php?p=766760#p766760 is Post 82 Post #1 (this thread) showing how to boot into a Live MX-23.2 without using a USB, etc. This post is about Windows using Grub2Win which is a boot manager that allows other operating systems to be used. It does not touch the Windows master boot record and is located on the system’s primary partition. It can boot into an ISO file.

That post showed that it is possible to boot into a Live MX-23.2 as well install MX-23 into another drive, such as an internal SSD connected to the motherboard with a SATA cable or an external drive (HDD or SSD, etc.) connected to a motherboard USB port via a USB connector/UASP adapter. But this post did not show how to install using the same drive where Windows and the extracted MX-23 ISO files are located. That is the purpose of this post.

FYI: Post 87 Post #6 (this thread) is about the MX-Installer not recognizing the device or partitions where Windows and the extracted MX-23.2 ISO files are.

This post shows how to install a Live MX-23 onto an empty partition (there are actually two) of the same drive that Windows and the Live MX-23 extracted ISO files reside on. This post is divided into two sections. The first is a step by step guide on how to do this and the second has some points I thought were important to keep in mind.

1. After being able to boot into a Live MX-23 as shown in Post 82 Post #1 (this thread) above there are a few things that need to be done in Windows. At this point I will presume that Grub2Win has been installed and setup (all that essentially means is that it has been installed) and the extracted MX-23.2 files have been put into a dedicated FAT32 partition (it only takes up about 2GB so 5GB should be enough.
2. In order for the Live MX-23 to be installed on a partition where Windows and the Live MX-23 files are located, it will be necessary to create at least two partitions (I am not sure and have not tested, but using Full Disk Encryption will require a partition for the /boot files; 500MB – 1GB would be the size).
3. The MX Installer is going to want at least two partitions. I created the test Windows installation using the entire disk so I shrank the primary partition (C:\) twice to create two partitions.
   
   One is for the root (/) that I made FAT32 (that doesn’t really matter) and labeled “ROOT” for easy identification. I made it 20GB for this test.
   
   The other is for the EFI partition (/boot/efi). Make it FAT32 (important) and make it 100MB (this size is important). I labeled it “EFI” for easy identification.
   
   If you want a SWAP partition then make another partition, format it FAT32 only for consistency and make it the desired size (the MX-23 Installer can create either a partition or file for SWAP, so I did not use the partition for SWAP in this test).
4. This step is a change from what was said in my Post 82 Post #1 (this thread) and is very important or the installation will fail. The Live MX-23 must be booted up to RAM. That is done by adding the “toram” option to grub (kernel parameter).
   
   In other words, my Post 82 Post #1 (this thread), Step 5, gave some text to add to the end or bottom of the C:\grub2\grub file. The grub2 is created when Grub2Win is installed. The “toram” option would be put after the line ending “nosplash”. The below code windows shows the complete text that should be put at the end of the grub file:

   Code: Select all

   menuentry "MX 23.2 Libretto manual Frugal Install" {
     insmod part_msdos
     insmod fat
     search --no-floppy --set=root --label MX-LINUX
     linux /antiX/vmlinuz bdir=antiX blab=MX-LINUX quiet splasht nosplash toram
     initrd /antiX/initrd.gz
   }

5. Now restart Windows which will boot up to the Grub2Win boot-selection window.
6. Select the “MX 23.2 Libretto manual Frugal Install” option to boot up to the Live MX-23.2. Because MX-23 is now booting up to RAM you should see a nice progress bar as everything is being loaded into RAM. If you do not see this progress bar then something is wrong and the installation will almost certainly fail.
7. Now that you are in MX-23.2 that is loaded into RAM, launch the MX Installer but do NOT used the Installer Icon on the Desktop. Rather, use the Terminal and use this command (otherwise the installation will fail):

   Code: Select all

   sudo minstall --brave

8. When at the installation point where selecting the drive and partitions, only a custom selection is allowed. The “Regular install using the entire disc” is greyed out in this case. That is okay since we only want to install on specific partitions.
   
   Choose a custom installation to chose the partitions to use. In my testing I created three for the installation: EFI, SWAP, and MX23. The below screenshot shows all the partitions on the SSD where Windows10 is installed.
   
   MX-Installer_Windows_Partitions.png
   sda1 to sda4 are all Windows partitions.
   sda5 (MX-LINUX) is the 14GB FAT32 partition for the extracted Live MX-23.2 ISO files are located
   sda6 (EFI) is the 100MB FAT32 partition for booting into MX-23
   sda7 (SWAP) is a 2GB partition that I never used in this test (MX-23 can use a SWAP file)
   sda8 (rootMX23) is a 20GB ext4 partition for MX-23 root and home
   
   By the way, all of those partitions are unmounted. You can confirm by opening "Disk Manager" in MX Linux (from the Whisker menu) and you should see all of the check boxes on the left side, under "Enable", should be empty, indicating that that partitions is not mounted.
   
   Continue as with a normal installation.
9. The installation should now be complete. Restart the computer, boot up to the Grub2Win menu and boot into Windows10.
10. Now that MX-23.2 has been installed, a Grub2Win menu entry needs to be created in order to boot into the MX-23.2 installation. First a copy of the MX-23 grub file will be needed so in MX-23, use a file manager, e.g. Thunar, and go to /boot/grub/grub.cfg and copy it to a FAT32 file system. You could also get this from the Live MX-23.2.
11. Now that you have the grub.cfg file from MX-23, go back to Windows and open Grub2Win. In the window that opens, named “Grub2Win Menu Configuration”, click on the blue “Linux” button on the upper-right side (see below screenshot). That will open Windows “File Explorer” to import the Linux grub.cfg file. As soon as that is done there will be three options to appear on the grub menu. I selected the first two, “MX 23.2 Libretto” and “MX 23.2 Libretto, with Linux 6.1.0-17-amd64”. The third was MX-23.2 using systemD, which I did not test. The first two worked but I can delete the second since I don’t need it. The below screenshot shows the second page where the different operating systems are (I did not get the entire page as shown by the scroll bar not being all the way down). The order of appearance can be changed (arrows on the right side) as well as other configuration settings.
    
    Grub2Win_Linux_grub_Import.PNG
    
    Click “Apply” and “OK” on the next page that that should be it. The below is a screenshot showing the page where the “MX 23.2 Libretto” menu item can be configured.
    
    The grub menu window can be configured. The similar grub menu screenshot I used in Post 82 Post #1 (this thread) was using all the defaults. The below is a little different.
    
    I removed the turquoise highlight bar for the selected entry (it only changes to green like before but it clashed with green)
    
    background was changed to solid black
    
    text on right changed to white
    
    clock on right changed to progress bar on bottom (neither show – I stopped the countdown)
    
    Grub screen resolution can also be changed (I tested several, up to 1920x1080)
    
    Grub2Win_bootup_selection_screen.jpg
12. Now Restart and the grub menu should appear to select where you want to boot into.

Second Section
The following are some points I thought are important and may help in troubleshooting.

• If the Grub2Win menu does not appear when booting up then there are two likely reasons.
  
  1. Grub2Win is not the highest priority to boot into. To change go into the BIOS and check the boot order. There is often a second place. My MSI motherboard calls this secondary area BOOT PRIORITY. They both sound like the same thing but there are a lot of on-line pages that also talk about the boot priority in addition to the boot order. I spent hours on that problem.
  
  2. The second reason that might happen is the text that was added to the end of the Grub2Win grub.cfg file (located under the “grub2” folder) has gone away. See step If that happens, just paste it back in. See step 4 above. Please note that anytime a change is made to the Grub2Win boot menu configuration, the text that was added to the grub.cfg file (Step 4) will VERY OFTEN disappear. Not always, but almost always.
• The Grub2Win boot menu screen can be configured, e.g. it can be all black, etc. To change the background color of the menu screen, when in the Grub2Win application, just click on the image of its screen in the upper-right of the window.
• Windows10 doesn’t have an easy or at least obvious (meaning I never found one) way to extract ISO files. But a very easy way to do this is, in Windows, double-click the ISO file. That will automatically mount it to a virtual DVD drive. Simply copy the now extracted and shown files into the “MX-LINUX” partition. Done.

Question/comments/errors welcome.