frugal install - HOW?

[Huckleberry Finn]

I'm booting MX from an ISO on a HDD partition

Yes, I've overlooked this part.

[frmald]

Thank you, fehlix and Huckleberry Finn, that's a wealth of information that I can play with.

That's correct, you directly boot using fromiso. By this you bypass the GFX-boot menu provied through syslinux.
And the info you found an youtube does only show something about our existing boot menus.
Now what?

Well, at this point I have extracted the ISO files to an external HDD partition, and I was trying to install syslinux and MBR (dd bs=440 ...) on /dev/sdb (in order to use the external HDD as a boot device). Except the syslinux Ubuntu installs doesn't like the .c32 files from the ISO. Maybe I'll try the /usr/bin/syslinux from MX's linuxfs.

Anyway, the p* settings make way more sense.

[fehlix]

Well, at this point I have extracted the ISO files to an external HDD partition, ...

No need to boot fromiso, if you already extracted the ISO.
That's the main exercise what frugal-install does: It extracts the antiX folder from the ISO on a partition.
So in effect you already made "frugal-install".
You now just need to apply buuid (or blab, or bdev) and if the folder name antiX need to change use bdir= and to use persistence within the same bdir by using persist_root, or persist_all etc,
That's it. And you have a handmade Grub-menu entry for frugal-boot with persistence.

[frmald]

Uh, are you saying "frugal install" really means just copying antiX/ "as is" from the ISO to the fdev (perhaps renaming it, to accomodate multiple frugals)? I... thought the scripts would configure some other things as well.

[fehlix]

Uh, are you saying "frugal install" really means just copying antiX/ "as is" from the ISO to the fdev (perhaps renaming it, to accomodate multiple frugals)? I... thought the scripts would configure some other things as well.

yes, that's mainly it. So yes, you can have multiple fdir/bdir's or even put for persistence pdir somewhere else. But just start simple, to avoid confusion .. until you digest the concept.
.. and coming back to one of your original questions - the flexibility of the system is probably a reason you find not all potential use-cases in detail explained. But you might have found a forum which is helpfully minded and will try to help you to achieve what ever your goal might be.

[frmald]

Code: Select all

menuentry "MX-19.3_x64.iso" {
  insmod ext2
  set isopath="/iso/MX-19.3_x64.iso"
  search --no-floppy --file --set=root $isopath
  probe -u $root --set=fuuid

  loopback loop $isopath
  linux  (loop)/antiX/vmlinuz fuuid=$fuuid fromiso=${isopath} fdir=/Frugal-Dir frugal_persist  lang=de tz=Europe/Berlin quiet nosplash
  initrd (loop)/antiX/initrd.gz
}

This does not work, and I really wish Huckleberry Finn hadn't deleted his post. I tried with and without fdir=. As soon as there is any f* frugal option, fromiso seems to stop working. It waits 15 secs and then reports it can't find /antiX/linuxfs on the "boot device"

I wish I could be more precise, but the boot script "helpfully" locks me out of the system (poweroff or reboot are my choices), without writing any logs or letting me interact with the initramfs. At least debian gives me an (initrd) prompt...

[fehlix]

Code: Select all

menuentry "MX-19.3_x64.iso" {
  insmod ext2
  set isopath="/iso/MX-19.3_x64.iso"
  search --no-floppy --file --set=root $isopath
  probe -u $root --set=fuuid

  loopback loop $isopath
  linux  (loop)/antiX/vmlinuz fuuid=$fuuid fromiso=${isopath} fdir=/Frugal-Dir frugal_persist  lang=de tz=Europe/Berlin quiet nosplash
  initrd (loop)/antiX/initrd.gz
}

This does not work, and I really wish Huckleberry Finn hadn't deleted his post. I tried with and without fdir=. As soon as there is any f* frugal option, fromiso seems to stop working. It waits 15 secs and then reports it can't find /antiX/linuxfs on the "boot device"

I wish I could be more precise, but the boot script "helpfully" locks me out of the system (poweroff or reboot are my choices), without writing any logs or letting me interact with the initramfs. At least debian gives me an (initrd) prompt...

OK... just a moment

[JayM]

I'm booting MX from an ISO on a HDD partition

Yes, I've overlooked this part.

Me too.

[fehlix]

That is not meant to work OOTB, you need adjust.
So better show what you have. Where is the ISO located or on what partition is the extracted iso.

[frmald]

That is not meant to work OOTB, you need adjust.
So better show what you have. Where is the ISO located or on what partition is the extracted iso.

I went back to booting with fromiso= and wiped out the extracted ISO, because I want to understand what exactly is happening (and because it feels more futureproof to let an "official" installer take care of business). I'll get to "manual cp-based frugal install" afterwards. So, per your initial post in this thread,

Code: Select all

menuentry "MX fehlix" {
  insmod ext2
  isopath="/ssd2iso2/MX-19.3_x64.iso"
  search --no-floppy --file --set=root $isopath
  probe -u $root --set=fuuid

  loopback loop $isopath
  linux  (loop)/antiX/vmlinuz fuuid=$fuuid fromiso=${isopath} fdir=/Frugal-Dir frugal_persist quiet nosplash
  initrd (loop)/antiX/initrd.gz
}

Code: Select all

XUb ~# ls /tmp/mnt/SSD2_ISO/
'$RECYCLE.BIN'   boot   ssd2iso2  'System Volume Information'

If I delete all the f* options, there is a message "Starting fromiso" and the system comes up beautifully.

If there is any f* option besides fromiso=, there are frugal-related messages, it looks for antiX/linuxfs, and after 15 secs locks me out of the system saying it failed to find the boot device. /dev/sdb6 (which is where the ISO sits) is listed among the filtered devices.

I also tried adding blab=SSD2_ISO, buuid=<ISO's uuid as probe -u reports it>, to no avail, to the linux ... command line.

I'll try to have a look at the bootscripts, which seem to be in the BitJam GH repo you listed. Maybe the fuuid / frugal_persist flags turn off the fromiso module?

In any case, thank you for your support and patience, I do appreciate it, and let's hope a little bit of documentation (e.g. a working config example on the wiki, with & without fromiso) comes out of this effort.

* Aside: in Grub "set x=y" can be abbreviated to x=y, and "search..." to "search -s root {-l/-u/-f} device-artifact". You learn these tricks after rebooting a couple of times into your friendly Grub genie :)