Finnix

Inclusion into custom bootdisk difficult after version 100

Asked by Peter Rabbitson

In the past I trivially added Finnix v100 to my multi-purpose grub-based USB stick like this:

# cat boot/images/finnix/submenu.lst
title Finnix v100 x86-64 Linux 2.6.32 (2010-10-28)
    kernel /boot/images/finnix/100/vmlinuz.x86-64 finnixfile=/boot/images/finnix/100/root.img noeject noswap usbhid sshd vga=791 sshd_password=123
    initrd /boot/images/finnix/100/initrd.gz

title Finnix v100 i386 Linux 2.6.32 (2010-10-28)
    kernel /boot/images/finnix/100/vmlinuz.x86 finnixfile=/boot/images/finnix/100/root.img noeject noswap usbhid sshd vga=791 sshd_password=123
    initrd /boot/images/finnix/100/initrd.gz

title Go Back
    configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst

# ls -l boot/images/finnix/100/
total 125968
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2676709 Oct 26 2010 initrd.gz
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 66 Jun 26 2013 md5sums
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 121585664 Oct 26 2010 root.img
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2299296 Oct 25 2010 vmlinuz.x86
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2413824 Oct 25 2010 vmlinuz.x86-64

where initrd.gz, root.img, and the 2 kernels were taken directly off the Finnix v100 iso. Everything worked and was happy

However when I tried to do the same with the current version 108 and any version back to 101 - I keep getting stuck with Finnix not being able to find itself on the USB once the boot starts. It's almost if finnixfile= is no longer respected at boot.

I suspect it is something exceedingly simple that I need to add to make the USB stick "recognizable". I would really like to avoid overengineering stuff with syslinux - grub1 boots on pretty much everything off a USB these days, and has a rather nice UI.

Is this easily fixable?

Thank you!

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Ryan Finnie (fo0bar) said : 		#1

The CD layout was substantially re-engineered in Finnix 101, and basically needs the full CD layout to boot. However, Finnix 108 and later supports booting from a loopback ISO on the USB device, if you can switch to grub2:

# mkdir /media/usbdrive
# mount /dev/sdX1 /media/usbdrive
# grub-install --force --no-floppy --boot-directory=/media/usbdrive /dev/sdX
# mkdir /media/usbdrive/isos
# wget -O /media/usbdrive/isos/finnix-108.iso http://www.finnix.org/releases/108/finnix-108.iso

And then put the following in /media/usbdrive/grub/grub.cfg:

set timeout=15
set default=0

menuentry "Finnix 108" {
        insmod part_msdos
        search --no-floppy --file --set=root "/isos/finnix-108.iso"
        set iso_path="/isos/finnix-108.iso"
        export iso_path
        insmod iso9660
        loopback loop "/isos/finnix-108.iso"
        set root=(loop)
        configfile /boot/grub/loopback.cfg
        loopback -d loop
}

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