How to include a Menu for OS selection when burning some iso files in a cd

[Benny]

I would like to have more than 1 linux distro in a cd & being able to select which one to load at start up. Do I have to write a script for it? Is it so simple? Does it invloves much more than this?

I'm asking because I keep remembering the famous .bat & .cfg files in a windows environment, & all the things one could do with them just by including some commands in there. A linux environment should be, at least that's what I've been hearing for a while, as capable/flexible as windows if not more.

Thanks in advanced! :cool:

PS. I can't be the only one that has thought about it. Someone has to have had it solved, I'm sure.

[Sylvander]

1. Used a Google search of the Puppy forums (http://wellminded.com/puppy/pupsearch.html), and found the following:

Multi-Boot Live CD's (http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=39051&sid=307ba4a510c09e18c9accc0e31abb0e9)

2. Personally I do it the easy way...
Just keep a stack of [6?] "live" Puppy CD's, and choose which one to put in the optical drive.
(a) If I have plugged in, the Flash Drive holding the pupsave, and there's also a copy of the pupsave on [a partition on] the internal HDD...
The Puppy asks which pupsave I want to use.

(b) If I don't have the Flash Drive plugged in, the Puppy finds only the pupsave on the HDD [this is FASTER than the Flash Drive], and uses it.

3. I think I've seen mention on the Puppy forums, of having multiple Puppies on a DVD, with a menu to choose.
I just kept doing it the easy way. :)
Wouldn't mind knowing how, if you find an easy way to do this.

[Sylvander]

One example of an advantage of "keeping it simple"...

Yesterday I burned a new CD-RW = Luci-232. [The latest version newly released]

And blanked the previous version CD-RW = Luci-231.

Just swapped out the new version for the old version [in position 3->(they're always kept in strict order)] in my bundle of 6 Puppy CD's.
Booted the new version...
It auto-detected that the pupsave was a Luci-231 version, and automatically added updated files to the pupsave to suit Luci-232.

Simple or what? :) :cool:

MY PUPPIES:

1. Dpup-010
2. Teenpup mini 2010 beta
3. Luci-232 [issued Oct 18th]
4. Lupu-511
5. Boxpup-431
6. Qrky-130

[Benny]

Thank you Sylvander for the tip! In relation to this of putting more than one bootable distro within a cd I must say that I'm taking a brief brake out of it. This's because what aroused me to imagine doing this was that the Lucid installation within a CFCard didn't worked well (to slow a performance) & I, abruptly, decided that a smaller distro would outperform Lucid under the same conditions & now have Tinycore sitting down within my iPod.

Later on I thought that there might be a few configuration changes that might be not too hard to learn to fix the performance issue of Lucid. I'm working with this right now & anything useful for the community will be posted right here.

But that I'm going to try Tinycore somewhere is a fact to be made reality sooner or later. In the case I like it then, I'll put my mind in constructing a cd with:
1) Puppy431 --- 2) Lucid511 --- 3) DSL --- 4) Tinycore

Have read a lot lately in the web about this & it seems that there're quite a few apps that have been written explicitly to do just this & others that can do it apart from being a cd/dvd burners, mainly.

I'll be back in a few days to this same post with something else between hands!

PS. Apart from the theme of this post I have a question for anyone that knows the answer to it. What's causing that after I've logged in & written the above post that the site tells me that I can't perform the action intended & suggests that I reload it? I then have to relog-in. Exactly the same thing happened to me when posting somewhere else. NOTE: When logging in, in both cases, I didn't select the "Keep me logged-in" flag box...

[Sylvander]

1. "the Lucid installation within a CFCard didn't worked well (too slow a performance)"
(a) Any storage device that is connected using USB 2.0 is going to read and write slower than would an internal HDD.

(b) Hence, when a Puppy needs something [the Puppy files at bootup, or a package during the session] from the PUPSAVE [mounted read-only I think] on the CFCard...
This activity will be rather slower than would be, when reading from [or copying/saving back to] a faster device like the internal HDD.

(c) When the Puppy is booting...
And needs to load the SFS-file...
It loads faster from a USB device [Flash, or CFCard], than it does from an optical disk...
Hence it's best to copy the SFS-file from the optical disk to the USB storage device.

(d) Obviously, you need to use the fastest device available to you under the circumstances pertaining.

2. "a smaller distro would outperform Lucid under the same conditions & now have Tinycore sitting down within my iPod"
I imagine it depends how that smaller distro operates.
Do you find that Tinycore does indeed outperform Lucid?

3. "I thought that there might be a few configuration changes that might be not too hard to learn to fix the performance issue of Lucid"
I've noticed myself, that...
(a) Some Puppies are faster than others.
(b) i.e. Smaller Puppies load faster than bigger Puppies.
(c) Bigger programs [Firefox] load slower than smaller programs [Seamonkey].

4. "What's causing that after I've logged in & written the above post that the site tells me that I can't perform the action intended & suggests that I reload it? I then have to relog-in."
Probably a problem with use of cookies at the website.
Cookies must be enabled/functioning.
And you may need to delete all cookies and begin afresh.
Also...
They are time-limited, so...
Your PC's year/date/time must be correctly set.
I had that problem on my PC when the year was wrongly set.

5. "NOTE: When logging in, in both cases, I didn't select the "Keep me logged-in" flag box..."
Did fixing this end the problem?

[Sylvander]

See this thread:
GRAPHICAL BOOT MENU to your Puppy Live CD (http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=61132).

[Paul Komski]

MagicISO (http://www.magiciso.com/tutorials/miso-createmultibootcd.htm) can certainly prepare a boot CD/DVD from which you can select between multiple installation CD/DVD ISO images so I don't see why the ISOs of a number of functional Live Linux CDs (or indeed any other bootable optical medium) should be any different.

[Sylvander]

1. Decided to have a go using MagicISO.

2. Found I had installed [into Win2000Pro] version v5.5 build-272 way back when.

3. Downloaded and installed the latest version 5.5 build-281, and rebooted.

4. Ran MagicISO.
It warned me that because I was using an unregistered version [costs just under £30 for MagicISO], it would only burn an ISO of maximum size 300MB.
That seemed OK because Puppy ISOs are around 110MB to 150MB.
I could add 2 of these and still be well under 300MB.
Clicked "Try it".

5. All was looking good.
Seemed pretty intuitive.
Had no idea how to use it, but did what seemed obvious and was progressing well.

6. Navigated to [and double-clicked on] the ISO file for Boxpup-431, and the files held within the ISO appeared in the upper window.

7. Clicked on "Tools->Make Multi-Boot Image", and in the "Boot items" window clicked "Add".

8. Chose "Boot from bootable image file".

9. In the "Add boot item wizard", in "Source bootable image file", chose "From currently opened image file", and clicked the navigation folder.

10. The "ISO files browser" window opened, I highlighted all the files, and clicked OK.

11. I was taken back to the "Add boot item wizard", with \boot.cat now in the box.

12. Clicked the "Next" button, and was taken back to the next window in the "Add boot item wizard" with "Description" & "Hot Key" windows.

13. Typed a description. [No problem]

14. Tried to type a hotkey letter [a], but though I could get the cursor in the window, it would not respond to any attempt to remove or replace the existing "None".

15. When I clicked "Finish", was warned that the hotkey was not valid, and to choose another hotkey, which cannot be done. :(

[Benny]

Thanks Sylvander for responding! With respect to post #5-point 2: The other day started playing a little with 'grub', put it in the CFCard (after deleting all files there except for ?extlinux? which is protected - sorry but I tried right now to put the card in its slot for reading the name of the file but the system (Lucid511) fails to recognize it) along with Tinycore but maybe for the persistence of the said file it never even tried to boot. This probably means that I'll have to erase the whole thing & start anew. So, can't respond yet to your question.
With respect to point 5: After I checked the said box it stopped un-logging me off. Not a definitive yes...
In relation to post #6: Went to all the links provided there but sounds to me that the theme there's not exactly the one I'm interested in, but close.
Thanks Paul Komski for the reference, it seems complete & user friendly. The only problem with it is that, apparently, is a Windows api only.
I'm sorry you encountered such a problem seemingly late in your efforts, Sylvander. Hope nothing else is encountered broken! I'm pretty sure that there're at least half a dozen linux api's that can do that too. I'll keep searching & if something useful gets in my way I'll post it here...