How to boot BT3 from usb boot disk and native boot

[ESC201]

Hi all, I have spent the past two months trying to create a boot cd that will boot BT3 while still allowing BT3 to boot itself. I found this process extremely frustrating but now that I have it all sorted out I'd like to share what I did so no one will have to go through the same thing I did.

What you need...
a) A usb drive (obviously).
b) A Windows computer if you are more comfortable with Windows than Linux.
c) A cold drink.

1) Install BT3 to your flash drive.
I will not go over this. Pureh@te has an excellent tutorial on how to do that here.
HOWEVER, I made one change to this. Do not make two partitions on your usb drive. Leave you usb drive as one partition formatted as FAT32.


2.) Now we are going to make the actual boot disk. This step is very straight forward, download this .iso. and then burn it to a cd. Don't delete the .iso, we need it for the next step.

3.) Next we need to copy some files from the .iso you just downloaded into BT. This can be done from Windows if you are more comfortable with that but it can certainly be done in any flavour of Linux also.
a) Open the .iso with PowerISO or similar program.
b) In the boot directory, extract the files "initrd.gz" and "vmlinuz" to your hard drive.
c) Copy those to files to the "boot" directory of your usb drive. We are overwriting the ones that BT has there by default.
If you boot BT now, you may notice that some things don't work. Don't worry, we are going to fix that soon.

4.) From my experience, the method of saving changes made to your filesystem that BT uses, our new kernel doesn't like. BT uses a file called "slaxsave.dat" to save changes and we need to change that. So what we need to do is open up the "syslinux.cfg" file which can be found on your usb drive in "boot/syslinux/"
So open that file up and find the boot option that is "BT3 Graphics mode with Persistent Changes". In the APPEND line find the "changes=/changes/slaxsave.dat" and change that to "changes=/slax/".
What we just did here was make it so that the boot disk and the native boot are saving changes you make while using BT in the same place. Also, using the slaxsave.dat method is not the greatest idea in the world as can read about here. Make sure you select that boot option every time you boot. You can also move that entry to the top so that it will select that one by default whenever you are booting your system up.

5.) Okay, so now that that's all done we need to rename the name of the folder that BT3 is located in. This is because the slax-boot-usb-from-cd which this boot disk is largely based off of looks for a folder called "slax" which has our operating system in but BT3 is in a folder called "BT3". Open your usb drive and simply rename the "BT3" folder to "slax".

6.) As I mentioned above, some things aren't working right now. This is because we need to add some kernel modules to BT so that our new kernel will be happy. So what you need to do is...
a) Let BT boot itself
a) Download this .zip file.
b) Get the file into BT3 and unzip it. (hopefully that isn't a problem)
c) Now copy the extracted "modules" folder to "/lib/". (We are going to replace the one that is already there.)

That should do it. You should now have a shiny new boot disk that can boot BT3 and also allow BT3 to boot itself. May I recommend some business card cds?
Anywho, if you have an problems or questions post a reply and I will try my best to help you out. I am by no means a Linux expert. Also, I have not been using my own boot disk for all to long so there may be other unforeseen problems I have yet to encounter.

By the way, is disk or disc proper English?

[atcmonke]

I am stuck at 6a-b. I have the means to unzip the file into BT but
the problem is I cannot get BT to boot because I got an error while
booting and it asked to restart. Do I boot BT into "Graphics mode with Persistent Changes"
or do I choose another option?

[ESC201]

Originally Posted by atcmonke

I am stuck at 6a-b. I have the means to unzip the file into BT but
the problem is I cannot get BT to boot because I got an error while
booting and it asked to restart. Do I boot BT into "Graphics mode with Persistent Changes"
or do I choose another option?

What exactly is your error? And yes, this step needs to done with changes enabled. The first boot option on the boot disk iso I made has the correct boot options for this.

[atcmonke]

am i suppose to be at the "enter login and password"?
after i do so, i xconf and then startx.
my error is

Fatal server error:
AddScreen/ScreenInit failed for driver 0

waiting for X server to begin accepting connections
giving up.
xinit: Connection reset by peer (errno 104): unable to connect to X server
xinit: No such process (errno 3): Server error.

also, what was the point of burning the disc if I am not using it in any of these steps?
unless I missed something? I went over the steps a 2nd time in case I missed something.

maybe i deleted more than i should from the "change=" line.
Edit: nevermind, still getting the same errors. :-/

[ESC201]

Originally Posted by atcmonke

am i suppose to be at the "enter login and password"?
after i do so, i xconf and then startx.
my error is

Fatal server error:
AddScreen/ScreenInit failed for driver 0

waiting for X server to begin accepting connections
giving up.
xinit: Connection reset by peer (errno 104): unable to connect to X server
xinit: No such process (errno 3): Server error.

That would be a problem with your X server. xconf should be in your boot options in the autoexec ("autoexec=xconf") argument. It is run automatically while your system is booting so you don't need to run it again when you log in.
That could be an issue with your kernel modules or with your installation of BT3. I don't know how you installed your system but I recommend following Pureh@ate's tutorial that I have linked to below. If you have not installed the kernel modules I posted below for the 2.6.24.5 kernel that could create a problem.

Originally Posted by atcmonke

also, what was the point of burning the disc if I am not using it in any of these steps?
unless I missed something? I went over the steps a 2nd time in case I missed something.

The purpose of a boot disk is to boot from a usb device on a system that does not support usb booting.
You should be using it to boot BT and follow the steps I have listed below to make sure everything works well. If you have been able to boot BT without using a boot disk then your system supports usb booting and you don't need a boot disk.

I'm sorry if I am being unclear. Everything seems so clear in my head, it's hard to explain to others.

[atcmonke]

This is what my entry is, before I had deleted the whole line after "changes="
but i fixed it and it is still giving me the same error.

LABEL pchanges
MENU LABEL BT3 Graphics mode with Persistent Changes
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND vga=0x317 initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw changes=/slax/ autoexec=xconf;kdm

I followed pureh@te's steps up to the point of booting up in VMware.
The issue is there was no folders in any of the partitions. [shrugs]
But from the looks of it, pureh@te makes a seperate partition to save
the changes, whereas in your tutorial, you changed it so that the
changes are saved within the same directory as BT OS. correct?

what is the difference between editing syslinux.cfg while in BT
compared to editing it in Windows with notepad? Or did you edit
it the same way pureh@te did and I was only assuming you edited
it in windows with notepad? if so, maybe i should start over...

[ESC201]

Originally Posted by atcmonke

This is what my entry is, before I had deleted the whole line after "changes="
but i fixed it and it is still giving me the same error.


I followed pureh@te's steps up to the point of booting up in VMware.
The issue is there was no folders in any of the partitions. [shrugs]
But from the looks of it, pureh@te makes a seperate partition to save
the changes, whereas in your tutorial, you changed it so that the
changes are saved within the same directory as BT OS. correct?

VMware? Are you running BT3 in VMware? If so I don't understand why you need a boot disk.
And yes, you are right on his tutorial. I used that tutorial so long ago I overlooked the fact that I used one partition. I found it more effecient for me to store everything on one partition formatted as FAT32 because since I first installed BT to my drive it's size has balloned from 900mb to over 4gb and my changes partition would have been full and that would have been a big headache to fix. Anyway, I recommend using one partition formatted as FAT32 that way you can always use Windows to move around modules and such. I'll fix that in my original post. Sorry for the confusion.

Originally Posted by atcmonke

what is the difference between editing syslinux.cfg while in BT
compared to editing it in Windows with notepad? Or did you edit
it the same way pureh@te did and I was only assuming you edited
it in windows with notepad? if so, maybe i should start over...

There is no difference. As long as you save the file in your boot directory you should be fine.
Just remember, Windows can't read the line breaks in Linux text files so you may have to convert it to Windows format. I'm not sure how to syslinux.cfg file is formatted.