jetman

It's done at last, except for a couple of quirks, which for the moment are completely harmless. The new menu works, the new Slax kernel works (altho apparently not at first, then I woke up fresh !), and CAT.C32 can in fact be used for simple help text files directly from the menu ! Next, I hope to look into that other thing I mentioned last week, that is, opening up the compressed ramdisk for Kubuntu. I suspect that's where one can hack a quik change, so that Kubuntu's boot files/dirs can be relocated. Later....Jet

Congrats ! I bet it'll go pretty quik, once you're powered back up. Lack of sleep will do it to you EVERY TIME. It's bitten me in the a** for the past few days w/ my paying work. CAT32.C32 is something I discovered while GOOGLEing for info about displaying help text using VESAMENU. It's crude, but it does display a simple text file w/o writing code and I have it tied to a menu pick. You can find it in the samples sub-dir of the SYSLINUX pkg. While browsing (the SYSLINUX daily mail digest), I also found out that SYSLINUX's author has a new beta release. No details til cracking the ZIP, but he wants folks on the list to test it, so he can release it by the weekend. In addition to everything else, I'm trying to recompile the kernel for Slax. The compile completed successfully, then crapped out when I tried to boot it. Must've missed something else. Time to reboot again. C'ya tomorrow....Jet

Why don't you post the top ten or twenty lines of your ISOLINUX.CFG ? It worked for me straight-away ! I'VE NEARLY REACHED THE END OF MY BOOT MENU JOURNEY ! I took my old .CFG file (as I mentioned yesterday) and added the new stuf. Didn't muck w/ changing colors, just did the minimum w/ a random PNG from my collection. Next, I trying to make one of the samples (CAT.C32) display help text. It boggles the mind, but SYSLINUX's author took that feature out of VESAMENU. Won't be pretty, but as long as it displays ASCII.... I don't grok this. I suspect MEMDISK and DISKEMU are the same thing. It (ie. MEMDISK) is just a floppy emulator, so that sounds like most of your desc of DISKEMU. I've heard of DISKEMU, bef your mention, just never had occasion to try it. Anyway, MEMDISK is what comes w/ the SYSLINUX pkg. But, there's no reason to think that DISKEMU wouldn't work as a replacement. Give it a whack....Jet

KOF: I'm glad you've finally seen the light. I was just about to rat you out to the Thought Police for your sojourn w/ CDSHELL. Now that appears unnec. Seriously, I just discovered that the SYSLINUX pkg has an important upgrade (3.35). Get it pronto, if you haven't already done so. In the root of the .ZIP file is README.MENU. That addresses items #1+#2+#3. The simple menu config is detailed here and (as I understand it) permits the use of simple 640x480 JPGs or PNGs as a backdrop. BTW, I started my own work on this subsystem last nite. I would also remind you of this, which is the menu I will mod for my tests. WRT CDIMAGE vs MKISOFS, you mite not need to change. I haven't used CDIMAGE, but as I've heard, it has the essential boot-info-table cmd-line opt, Ie. essential for using ISOLINUX as the CD's boot loader. That's it for now. I need to go back to the grind, as it's late morning over here in NYC. Check your mail tomorrow AM (your time.) Should have something to rept by then....Jet

It isn't too much work and I want to at least look at the files to see what's req'd. Little jobs like this are the best way to one's feet wet in a new lang, like BASH. Make a relatively simple change and implement it. Will keep you apprised in this space. TTYL....Jet

KOF94: Just a quikie about our running discussion. As I pointed out on the Knoppix thread, there are cheatcodes in the latest-greatest KNOPPIX (5.11) that permit the compressed-image file to be renamed and relocated. They're explicitly documented, so I'll leave that to you. In working out issues w/ my fav Linux distro (Slax), I've discovered what's almost certainly the answer to similar issues w/ other distros, like KUBUNTU, where there are no known suitable cheatcodes. It's the initial ramdisk image. This isn't a newbie effort and don't know when I can do it and pass it along to you, but here goes in case you have the goods for dealing w/ a Linux shell-script. You need to boot the desired distro, along w/ the initrd in compressed form (the .gz file.) Next, assuming the file is called initrd.gz, you'll need to do something like: mount /mnt/hda1 mkdir /mnt/hda1/rd cp initrd.gz /mnt/hda1 cd /mnt/hda1 gzip initrd.gz mount -t ext2 -vo loop /mnt/hda1/initrd /mnt/hda1/rd Next, edit the init shell-script, which is prob called linuxrc, in /mnt/hda1/rd, as in: vi /mnt/hda1/rd/linuxrc What needs to happen is to add new cheatocdes, to relocate/rename the compressed-image. Once you've made your changes: umount /mnt/hda1/rd gzip -9 initrd Reburn your CD w/ the updated initrd.gz and try your new cheatcodes. If any of this seems comfusing, I'm sorry, but that is what needs to be done. Given that distros don't change very often and components like the ramdisk sometimes don't change at all (from rev-to-rev), this approach would work well. Right now, I need to focus on paying work. Maybe, in the coming week, I can spare some time, bang it out and share. TTYL....

That is really useful to know. Could you take a look at Ubuntu for me? Some of us were looking in to how to do this over at this topic. Thanks. -kof94 Dude: Check out the cheatcodes for KNOPPIX. There are two that address this w/o the need to patch anything. You can explicitly indicate the dir and image file at boot-time. BTW, I presume earlier versions have this, but I know for sure it's true w/ 5.11. Besides unless you have an urgent reason to do otherwise, 5.11 is the best, bec it has true NTFS R/W support ! It's huge ! KOF94: Having said all of that, check out our other thread, as I have suggestions about Kubuntu....Jet

I'd be willing to bet the $OEM$ folder isn't in the root dir of the CD. That kicked my a** for a day or so once. Also check your WINNT.SIF or UNATTENDED.TXT or whatever you use....

I found yet another pointer to a multi-boot DVD script called mkcustomdvdmultiboot.sh. D/l'd it, but haven't tried it. Later....

Here are two more links, going deeper into the subj of remastering live CDs. Actually, the link to PCQuest looks to be pretty promising: http://www.livedistro.org/search/node/*dvd?PHPSESSID=23c032f3d9b273b86982187ca5b83087 http://www.pcquest.com/content/enterprise/2005/105070101.asp For my part, I haven't tried these yet, bec I got sidetraked into building an Ethernet->Fixed WiFi router and I actually added Kubuntu 6.10 to the same disc, which now has BartPE, Slax KillBill (Desktop), Slax Server (my new router), Knoppix, and CHNTPW. Interesting, but in the final analysis, not as productive as I'd hoped. But, c'est la vie....

I wish I could tell you exactly how to fix this (I don't use CDSHELL), but I do know that you aren't mapping in the CD dir at boot time, which is why your loader can't find /KNOPPIX. It happened to me when I was trying to get my multi-boot CD/DVD project (based on ISOLINUX) to work. I believe another thread, Linux and MultiBoot may be helpful. There are a couple of guys over there who are trying to (and have succeeded) in making that happen using CDSHELL

Download this: Flyakite's-Multi-Boot-DVD-Guide It's a completely browseable mirror of the site, incl downloads. Good luck....

Guys: While I was setting up a new browser on my system, I got an acct on the kubuntu forum and found the following: UbuntuRemaster. It's consistent w/ what I've been suggesting and although it isn't the Holy Grail to relocation, section 1.4 refers to preseed.cfg, which mite be the ans. Check it out....

You're not a dufus, the crew at Slax made easy for everybody ! 'Young padawon, misunderstand me, you do. Relocation that you seek, REMASTER you must !', he said in impeccable Yoda-speak Seriously, the forum for every distro I've visited has at least one Remastering topic and there's decent (general) activity on the LiveCDNews forum too. Who knows if you're really clever you mite just GOOGLE this out. Other people want to relocate, prob for diff reasons, so the ans are out there. I hope to return to this next week and perhaps help out....

The only distro I have that hasn't been easily added to a multi-boot DVD is FreeSpire, bec they have some unusual ISO properties, so you can't simply copy the files from the CD under Windows. Otherwise, it's easy. Now, as I've said before, if you want to relocate, it'll take some extra work on your part. The process is called remastering, in fact the simplest kind of remastering. However, what's needed is to have a working Linux system, so that you can extract the entire contents of the distro (typically, they're contained in a compressed file system only readable under Linux), then you modify (in order to relocate) one of the boot scripts to look for the core OS files in a diff CD sub-dir. Repackage (recompress) and recreate the ISO and you're done. Most distros have forums/fora which explain in detail the remastering process. That's how new distros come to be: via remastering. The distros I've tried: DSL (based on Knoppix) + Knoppix (not at the same time as DSL !) + Slax + Mepis + TRK. I don't think Kubuntu would be problematic and will try it when I get a break. (Other than monitoring the forums, I haven't touched that stuf in weeks.) DSL and Knoppix can't co-exist w/o remastering bec they rely on the same KNOPPIX sub-dir. Follow my instuctions to get a working multi-boot DVD, regardless of using ISOLINUX or CDSHELL, *then* see if remastering/relocating is worth addl effort....

Had I seen those CDSHELL samples I mite have made a different choice. About DISKEMU, I have no cloo. But I'd imagine it would work, as long as it's a simple binary, that is, not an .EXE. Remember ISOLINUX isn't an OS, but then CDSHELL/BCDW aren't either. What's wrong w/ MEMDISK ? About testing an ISOLINUX menu, yes you'll have to make an ISO and boot it under VMWARE or VPC to test it. A basic ISOLINUX boot setup, again you have one in your hands. KNOPPIX is what I used for my core files, even though I d/l'd the basic SYSLINUX kit (mainly for the docs.) They illustrate how a boot splash is setup (a text file which includes some funky control codes to clear the screen then the name of the splash file.) For a simple text menu, you have pad each line in the the text file w/ spaces out to the full screen size, but otherwise it's a no-brainer. Later....

I have a question: you've seen the Knoppix boot splash. Does CDSHELL do anything like that ? I got so confused at first, I never really gave it a full shake down. I got confusing info from diff web pages about the syntax for BCDW 1.50 vs 2.0, where the .INI files were placed, and the CDSHELL website started out by explaining the syntax of scripting lang, instead of a simple starter menu template, that I gave up on it and switched to ISOLINUX. Never looked back after that....Jet

Got it in one! Seriously though, I'm not bothered about the work involved I just want more information. For me my boot disc is a continuing personal project! I'm loathed to leave CDShell behind because it's so easy to use and because I enjoy using it! However, if you could provide me with some more info about using isolinux may be I'll stop being a grumbling old git and embrace change . Do you know of a syntax guide to isolinux? How do you go about booting windows/PE and floppy images? How would you go about adding CDShell to isolinux? (e.g. UBCD) As you can see I have a lot of questions that need answers before I convert. Help... You're not a grumbling old git. Quik confession: I have my own "obsession" w/ GRUB. I decided I wanted a better boot splash than ISOLINUX and GRUB will deliver that, *underneath* a nice menu. Last month, I spent over twenty hours, trying at least forty diff ISOs, but no joy. It hasn't beaten me, but I gave it a break so I could do some paying work. I will get it ! I haven't figured out booting CDSHELL, however I would like to add either UBCD or Hiren's Boot CD to my SuperDVD. My guess was to use its bootsector. This looks like a job for GOOGLE, altho I'd start by GOOGLEing MSFN. Feed to GOOGLE and something serendipitous may happen.... One of the links is the home page of ISOLINUX. Inside the SYSLINUX-311.ZIP (where all three boot loaders live), is a file called SYSLINUX.DOC, w/ the specs on the ISOLINUX/SYSLINUX/PXELINUX.CFG menu format.Finally, here's something live that boots BartPE, multiple Linux distros, *and* a couple of odd floppy images: The broken APPEND stmts shown above are supposed to be one single line when reconstituted. Here are a couple of undoc'd things about ISOLINUX: 1) To use the ISOLINUX.BIN boot loader, you *must* use an ISO program like MKISOFS, which has -boot-info-table capability. No NERO or EZ CD Creator to create the bootable ISO image. You can burn the ISO image w/ anything, but the ISO must be created w/ a -boot-info-table. For MKISOFS, just use that cmd-line opt and you're done. 2) ISOLINUX.CFG (the boot loader's menu spec) can be in the root, in /isolinux, or in /boot/isolinux. Consistent w/ your need for "order", I put the all of the ISOLINUX files (help files, memdisk, boot splashes) into /boot/isolinux, the kernel/ramdisk images for ea distro in a sub-dir under /boot (/boot/slax, /boot/knoppix, /boot/mepis, etc), and the floppy images in /FLPYS. 3) An ISOLINUX boot splash is pretty straight-fwd (now that I know how !) Get GIMPSHOP for Windows (freebie) to convert JPEGs/BMPs into PPMs. There's a webpage out there [CHALLENGE !] that explains the precise proc for using the PPM2LSS script (under Linux) that comes in the SYSLINUX kit. That is, once you have some PPMs that you want to finalize, boot your fav Linux live CD to convert them using PPM2LSS. I made my boot splashes 640x420, allowing up to three lines of text for the menu and a sgl line for the 'boot:' prompt from ISOLINUX. I've already done virtually everything you're trying to do. Relocating core files for certain distros is where I drew the line, mainly bec this effort isn't commercial. If it were, I'd have done that too. Chew on this for a while. Good luck.... B)

Your issue is with the tools you want to use to get the job done. The CDSHELL menus I've seen aren't especially impressive or unique, so what's the diff ? Maybe yours is really unique, but KUBUNTU's boot menu is as good as (if not better than) any CDSHELL menu I've seen. KUBUNTU uses ISOLINUX which does virtually everything CDSHELL does, exc when it comes to launching certain boot loaders. Similar to the KUBUNTU boot splash, I have a dithered photo as my ISOLINUX boot splash and an integrated text menu, for selecting menu items. ISOLINUX' config file syntax is very easy-to-understand. So, the bottom line is what's the diff bet CDSHELL or ISOLINUX ? Both work well for the menu task. Finally, about putting KNOPPIX, KUBUNTU, whatever in their own sub-dirs on your CD: the answers are already in your hands. You're annnoyed not w/ the fact that this can't be done, but rather that you haven't been able to find a ready-made answer on a particular web page. It's not that the ans isn't out there, you can't find it. But, you've forgotten that these live CD are fully scripted (unlike Windows), so that you can (w/ some work on your own) uncover the variables that need to be changed, that will permit the core directories on a given live CD to be relocated. I'm sure it's only a matter of a couple of shell variables that need to be changed. Is it worth the effort ? I can't speak for you, but while I'd like to know (if you ever find out), but other than a few more GOOGLE queries, I'm prepared to let distro sub-dir relocation go by the wayside. Simply isn't worth much more effort on my part. BTW, here's an article about a multi-distro live CD I found. Enjoy....

You'd have to look at/find the cheatcodes for Ubuntu or their instructions for remastering. Essentially, I burned their CD, checked out the system for an hour, then put it away. I know it has to do w/ the "preseed/file" clause in isolinux/isolinux.cfg, but that's as far as I got. Having taken another look @ it, I can't wait til my new DVD burner arrives, as I'd like to update my disc to replace Mepis w/ Kubuntu ! I definitely didn't give it enuf attention when I was doing my distro eval during the summer.... If you make any progress w/ this PLEASE post your results. I won't be able to get back to this bef Wed the 22nd Nov. Good luck....

At long last, I got access to this site and I'm not going to lose it again. So, I just took a snapshot of the site and uploaded it to Flyakite-MultiBoot-DVD-Guide. I used one of my fav power tools, HTTrack, so I got everything, including the download files. It's much better than the archive w/ the .mht files bec it's a real HTML snapshot of the site as it is today. Enjoy....

Thanx much ! B)

More than one Linux distro using ISOLINUX is cake. Typically, ISOLINUX is found in /boot/isolinux. Put the kernel+ramdisk files for each distro in a sub-dir under /boot, as in /boot/mepis for SimplyMEPIS, /boot/slax for Slax KillBill Ed, and /boot/server for Slax Server Ed. The statements shown above work that way. The files in the root of each distro go into the root of the ISO, exc for Slax Server+KillBill Eds, bec each of those distros have a cmd-line param (from=/) which permit their support files to be placed in their own sub-dirs. Distros based on Knoppix (Knoppix, DSL, et al) are problematic bec they each rely on a /KNOPPIX sub-dir which can't be relocated, otherwise ISOLINUX makes a multi-distro CD/DVD easy. BTW, I would point out that I also integrated BartPE and the CHNTPW P/2K password cracker gizmo into the same ISOLINUX menu with a nice splash screen. HTH....

Is it my ISP's DNS or has flyakite's site gone away ?

Allen: This is probably never going to work the way I'd like it to, regardless of the pkg one uses. SYSLINUX/ISOLINUX is in the lead for the moment, but that could change. When I started this topic, I was planning on three different Linuxes, in addition to BartPE and a couple of WinXP installers. But that's not going to happen. I wish I had time to write the pkg I want. Just for grins, this is how close I've gotten: \i386\setupldr.bin ; Boot BartPE /boot/isolinux/isolinux.bin ; Boot DSL 3.0 /isolinux/isolinux.bin ; Boot Trinity Rescue Kit [Options] ;;;; Password = secret -or- md5 hash value Logo = \bcdw\logo.gif Font = \bcdw\fonts\ibmpc.fnt CharSet = \bcdw\charset\cp437.cpf Yes ! I know that I have more than one copy of ISOLINUX on the system, but what you see above is (literally) the twentieth iteration of this script. This isn't the way that it started out. Anyway, BartPE works fine and has always worked. Both TRK and DSL boot, but TRK boots broken (some of the files don't load and it never arrives at the normal cmd prompt.) My mission was to have a central menu, which would provide links to the native menus for DSL and TRK and boot BartPE or XP setup directly. Oh yeah, and maybe display a graphic splash screen. Not going to happen....Jet