Edited Saturday, August 18 2007

If you are experiencing booting problems, the most important thing to do is to keep calm and take things slowly. Just because you are having trouble booting does not mean you have lost any information on your hard disk. You may have lost access to it in the way that you are used to, but your operating system and all your information are still there (in 99.999% of cases). Chances are, Super Grub Disk will be able to either fix your problem for you instantly, or at least boot your operating system for you so you can fix the problem yourself after that.

<-- Main Menu.lst                    *S.G.D. Language Selection                    English Super Grub Disk                            Castellano Super Disco Grub                    Catala Super Disc Grub Opciones de arranque

The Main Menu.lst is available when you make your own personal Super Grub Disk bootable CD by combining one or more Live Linux distros with Super Grub Disk in your own .iso file, and  burning that to CD. To see what I mean, check this, How To Build a Super Grub Disk/GParted CD / DVD.

For now we just ignore the option to go to the Main Menu, I just use my 'down arrow' key to move the highlight bar down to select 'English Super Grub Disk', and press 'Enter'.

There will be an introduction page as shown below,

cat (cd)/boot/sgd/S10en/help/introduccion.txt INTRODUCTION Grub is a  very complete bootloader that can do more than just boot operating systems (OSes). This GRUB disk helps people to discover these lesser known options. It also helps people solving common boot problems by means of the running various Grub commands which you will find wrapped on simple menus. Super Grub Disk has an educational aim also. Each option has its own explanation. However, Super Grub Disk can be very Super, but... it is NOT perfect, so... Any request or improvement idea is welcome. Please send your email titled:'SGD "your idea" to:     adrian15 ARROBA raulete PUNTO net (Where ARROBA is @ , and 'PUNTO'  is '.' ) Pause. Press a key. Super Grub Disk 0.9528 Tribute_To_Australia Edition Copywrite (C) 2005,2006 adrian15 Super Grub Disk comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details, see Copyright in menu. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; for details see copywrite in the menu. Pause. Press a key. _

Super Grub Disk based on GNU GRUB version 0.97-os.1   (638K lower/523200k up   per memory) <--S.G.D. Language Selection.  (Go back)                                    |====================> English Super Grub Disk (Help) <===================| Gnu/Linux Windows Boot & Tools Advanced Quit    Press enter or -> to boot the selected OS, 'e' to edit the commands before booting, 'r' to reload, 'c' for a command-line, '/?N' to search or <- to go back if possible.

This is the Super Grub Disk's English Menu.  

This 'English Super Grub Disk' menu serves instead as the main menu. This is the one central menu that all the main options branch off from. We can start here and return again after exploring each of Super Grub Disk's other menus.

There are two main ways to use your Super Grub Disk, these are:

• Select the appropriate Super Grub Menu option to do what you need by pressing your down or up arrow keys on your keyboard, then press your 'Return' (or 'Enter' key. Some of these features are unique to Super Grub Disk.
• Press your 'c' key to go into GRUB Command Line mode. You should be given a black background with white text on it and below that, a grub>_ prompt. GRUB is the only bootloader that I know of that has a command line. GRUB's command Line is a very powerful and flexible feature, and anyone with a few instructions can do amazing things with GRUB's Command Line.

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Edited Saturday, August 04 2007 This how-to has just been freshly updated, but it needs to be updated again already, Puppy Linux version 2.17.1 is now out. Release notes for Puppy Linux version 2.17.1 I will update this how-to when I get time.  We all know how useful and versatile Super Grub Disk is, just look in the rest of this page if you want to see all the things Super Grub Disk can do for you. Here's yet another use for Super Grub Disk most people probably wouldn't otherwise be aware of. We can use Super Grub Disk as a base for making our own combinations of our favorite LiveCDs! :) The first time this how-to was made, it seemed like a good idea to make this combination of three great distros on one CD, even though I was aware that Puppy Linux already contains its own GParted. So why do we need two versions of GParted in the same CD? Firstly because it's important to be using the very latest version of GParted LiveCD. Secondly because the GParted-Clonezilla LiveCD also includes the latest Partimage,  TestDisk and Photorec,  as well as Clonezilla, all of which I really like. The CD that we will make below here features GParted-Clonezilla livecd 2.0 which is based on both GParted-0.3.4-8 and CLonezilla-1.0.3-18, which are current at the time this how-to is being made. Puppy Linux boots up from the CD and loads itself entirely into the PC's memory, so once Puppy Linux is up and running you can take the CD out!  Puppy Linux will keep on running in the RAM. That makes it a great rescue CD, because you can then have the CD drive available for copying any files you need to rescue to a CD-ROM.  To access your files, Puppy Linux has a great file system mounting utility called Pmount, just right-click on the desktop and go -->Filesystem-->'Pmount'. It's quick and very simple to use, you don't need to know any Linux commands. Puppy Linux can also play DVD movies very well. In fact, Puppy Linux will amaze you! Puppy Linux can run even well in many older computers with moderate hardware, and yet seems to be able to do everything if not more than some of the full size distros. It's great! Put Puppy Linux through its paces and practice with it a little, you'll fall in love with Puppy!

There are two purposes to this how-to.

One is to make a useful CD, but you may be able to download an .iso for some other utility CD you like already made. Or just use three separate disks, CD-ROMs are cheap these days. It is kind of nice to only need to carry one CD instead of three if you're traveling. If you're at home it's tidier to have just one CD to keep than three of them.

Second, but most important is the educational value of the exercise.
Some people might be able to learn a little more about using Linux commands this way.
Also, some of you may be interested in learning how to make your own bootable CDs using Super GRUB Disk as a base. If you can follow this example and make a bootable CD then you can probably make some other combination of your own choice using the same ideas.

You should use a CD-RW disk for your project rather than a blank CD-R in case you make a mistake or decide you can improve something. CD-RWs, as we all know, can be erased and re-written, but CD-R disks can't.

This is a "copy & paste" HowTo! The easiest way to follow this exercise is to open your own command line (terminal) and simply copy and paste the commands (except where you have to provide own specific information like disk and partition details, hostnames, passwords,...). This saves you a lot of time and effort and helps to avoid typos. You should only copy and paste the commands. Those don't begin until after the $ (prompt). Many of these tables shown for illustration also include the outputs or feedback from the commands. These can vary from one machine to another but should still serve to give an idea what should happen. You should be careful not to copy any of these example outputs as part of your commands. The commands are usually only in the top line, results, feedback or output is normally underneath.

Okay, let's get started...

Follow this link to find a download mirror for Super GRUB Disk and download the latest cdrom version of  Super GRUB Disk. For example, the .iso file I have this time is called sgd_0.9598.iso
The size of that file is only 394.1 kb, so it isn't a big download at all.

After we download any .iso files we always run an md5sum integrity check on them to make sure they are genuine and intact.

herman@red:~$ md5sum sgd_0.9598.iso d283da5d195be1ff434e289cf48280b7  sgd_0.9598.iso

I don't know where to find the md5sum I should expect for Super GRUB Disk, but I still ran the MD5sum on it anyway.

Download an .iso for the latest GParted -- LiveCD.  The one I chose was GParted-Clonezilla-2.0 , 133.1 mb.
GParted LiveCD is the greatest hard disk partitioning software in the world. It also includes Partimage for making backups of entire partitions and TestDisk for MBR and partition recovery work.
gparted-clonezilla-2.0.iso (GParted-livecd-0.3.4-8 and Clonezilla 1.0.3-18)
MD5SUM : f8744b2ef29262750fd31ea7bcb9dce7

herman@red:~$ md5sum gparted-clonezilla-2.0.iso f8744b2ef29262750fd31ea7bcb9dce7  gparted-clonezilla-2.0.iso

Puppy Linux is a very special and very small Linux distro that can do some amazing things!
You should have an .iso file for each of those now in your /home/username directory.

In this how-to we are planning to take files from three different .iso images and combine them all in one folder and make it into one single combination .iso image.
Let's make the new directory for copying the files from the three .iso s into, 
Code:

herman@red:~$ mkdir supergpartpuppy

We'll mount each of those .iso files one at a time so we can copy the files out of each one into our new supergpartpuppy directory. Mounting the .iso image is a shortcut so we won't need to burn them to CD first, it will save time and save money for CDs too.

First, puppy-2.16-seamonkey-fulldrivers.iso, we need to make a mount point for it, Code: herman@red:~$ sudo mkdir /media/puppyiso Next, we mount it, Code: herman@red:~$ sudo mount -o loop -t iso9660 puppy-2.16-seamonkey-fulldrivers.iso /media/puppyiso/ Immediately following this we should see an icon on our desktop called puppyiso and we can open that to view all the files inside.

Next , we'll copy all the files from puppyiso into our new superpartpuppy directory,
Code:

herman@red:~$ sudo cp -r /media/puppyiso/* supergpartpuppy/

Second, GParted-Clonezilla-2.0.iso, we need to make a mount point for it first, Code: herman@red:~$ sudo mkdir /media/gpartclonziso Next, we mount it, Code: herman@red:~$ sudo mount -o loop -t iso9660 gparted-clonezilla-2.0.iso /media/gpartclonziso/ An icon should now appear on our desktop called gpartclonziso and we can open that to view all the files inside.

Next , we'll add all the files out of gpartclonziso to our superpartpuppy directory.
Code:

herman@red:~$ sudo cp -r /media/gpartclonziso/* supergpartpuppy/

One problem is that Super Grub Disk and GParted LiveCD both have a /boot/grub directory and they both have a /boot/grub/menu.lst file.
If I'm going to combine the files from both of those .isos into one directory, probably the Super GRUB Disk's files will overwrite the files from Gparted-Clonzilla that are already there and have the same name.
I need to overwrite GParted-Clonzilla's /boot/grub files with Super GRUB Disk's /boot/grub files, because Super Grub Disk has a more powerful GRUB. That's why I am leaving the Super GRUB Disk.iso to the last in this how-to.
But, I need to save GParted-Clonzilla's /boot/grub/menu.lst file somehow. That's why I'm going to plan ahead and use an 'mv' command to rename GParted LiveCD's /boot/grub/menu.lst and call it /boot/grub/menu.lsta instead, to differentiate it so it won't be overwritten.
Code:

herman@red:~$ sudo mv  supergpartpuppy/boot/grub/menu.lst supergpartpuppy/boot/grub/menu.lsta

Third, the Super Grub Disk .iso, we need to make a mount point for it first, Code: herman@red:~$ sudo mkdir /media/supergrubiso Next, we mount it, Code: herman@red:~$ sudo mount -o loop -t iso9660 sgd_0.9598.iso /media/supergrubiso/ Immediately following this we should see an icon on our desktop called supergrubiso and we can open that to view all the files inside.

Let's copy the whole supergrubiso to supergpartpuppy where we can work on it. 
Code:

herman@red:~$ sudo cp -r /media/supergrubiso supergpartpuppy/

We want to copy all the files we need out of supergrub.iso into superpartpuppy, then we'll remove the extra copies and the files we don't need.

herman@red:~$ sudo mv  supergpartpuppy/supergrubiso/boot/grub/* supergpartpuppy/boot/grub/

herman@red:~$ sudo rmdir  supergpartpuppy/supergrubiso/boot/grub

herman@red:~$ sudo mv supergpartpuppy/supergrubiso/boot/* supergpartpuppy/boot/

herman@red:~$ sudo rm -R supergpartpuppy/supergrubiso

And then because we want to be able to do what we want with the directories and files inside our new superpartpuppy directory, we'll relax the file permissions in it with a chmod command.
That means we won't need to type sudo before every command anymore.
Code:

herman@red:~$ sudo chmod -R 777 supergpartpuppy/

If you want to learn why we had to do that, you should read Nana Långstedt's chmod and chown tutorials, Linux File Permissions and, How to change a file's owner and group in Linux - 1.0.



======================================================

Okay, so now we have a superpartpuppy directory with files in it from three .iso files. We want to combine those into one bootable CD.
Super GRUB Disk has a file in it that we can edit and add booting instructions for the other two CDs in. That will give us a Super Grub menu when we boot up the CD and allow us to select which of the operating systems on the CD we want to boot into.

The file we need to edit is called menu.lst and it's inside superpartpuppy directory, and inside supergrubiso, inside /boot, inside /grub.
To get it the easiest way, use this command,
Code:

herman@red:~$ gedit supergpartpuppy/boot/grub/menu.lst

It should look like this, 'before',

# You can edit this file to add your own distribution # You can choose default to 0 to select first entry # which it is usually the entry for the default distro # # # You can also set timeout to something as 10 # # This is the shortcut to call Super Grub Disk (commented) #title Super Grub Disk ## The two commands: setgrubdevice and usbshift are needed ## so that SGD works well. #usbshift #configfile $(grub_device)/boot/sgd/menu.lst # # Just after default and timeout statements you have to put # setgrubdevice so that grub device is correctly set. default 2 timeout 2 setgrubdevice # This is compulsory #gfxmenu /boot/grub/message foreground ffffff background 0c00ff color white/brown yellow/cyan title Inicio normal / Normal Boot kernel $(grub_device)/vmlinuz lang=es a11y=none root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=100000 initrd=initramfs quiet BOOT=live splash initrd $(grub_device)/initramfs title Soporte de accesibilidad / Accesibility Support --> configfile $(grub_device)/boot/grub/menu2.lst title Super Grub Disk # The two commands: setgrubdevice and usbshift are needed # so that SGD works well. usbshift configfile $(grub_device)/boot/sgd/menu.lst title Normal boot. Kernel is aware of Boot device kernel $(grub_device)/vmlinuz lang=es a11y=none root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=100000 initrd=initramfs quiet BOOT=live splash boot_device=$(grub_device) initrd $(grub_device)/initramfs title Normal boot. Selecting kernel and initrd files depending on grub_device kernel $(grub_device)/vmlinuz_$(grub_device_string) lang=es a11y=none root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=100000 initrd=initramfs quiet BOOT=live splash initrd $(grub_device)/initramfs_$(grub_device_string) title Selecthd test configfile $(grub_device)/boot/grub/choose/selecthd.lst title findp test configfile $(grub_device)/boot/grub/choose/selectpart.lst title set SGD variables and boot SGD configfile $(grub_device)/boot/sgd/menu.lst

... and here's what it should look like 'after' it has been edited. If you want you can just highlight the entire text with your mouse in the example shown below, right-click and click 'copy'.
Use 'select all'-->'delete' to empty your old file and then  paste the details from the example below in there instead and click 'save' before closing the file.

# You can edit this file to add your own distribution # You can choose default to 0 to select first entry # which it is usually the entry for the default distro # # # You can also set timeout to something as 10 # # This is the shortcut to call Super Grub Disk (commented) #title Super Grub Disk ## The two commands: setgrubdevice and usbshift are needed ## so that SGD works well. #usbshift #configfile $(grub_device)/boot/sgd/menu.lst # # Just after default and timeout statements you have to put # setgrubdevice so that grub device is correctly set. default 0 # timeout 10 setgrubdevice # This is compulsory #gfxmenu /boot/grub/message foreground ffffff background 0c00ff color white/brown yellow/cyan title Super Grub Disk # The two commands: setgrubdevice and usbshift are needed # so that SGD works well. usbshift configfile $(grub_device)/boot/sgd/menu.lst title GParted-Clonezilla-2.0 configfile $(grub_device)/boot/grub/menu.lsta title Puppy-2.16-Seamonkey-Fulldrivers kernel $(grub_device)/vmlinuz  root=/dev/ram0 pmedia=cd initrd $(grub_device)/initrd.gz title Inicio normal / Normal Boot kernel $(grub_device)/vmlinuz lang=es a11y=none root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=100000 initrd=initramfs quiet BOOT=live splash initrd $(grub_device)/initramfs title Soporte de accesibilidad / Accesibility Support --> configfile $(grub_device)/boot/grub/menu2.lst title Normal boot. Kernel is aware of Boot device kernel $(grub_device)/vmlinuz lang=es a11y=none root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=100000 initrd=initramfs quiet BOOT=live splash boot_device=$(grub_device) initrd $(grub_device)/initramfs title Normal boot. Selecting kernel and initrd files depending on grub_device kernel $(grub_device)/vmlinuz_$(grub_device_string) lang=es a11y=none root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=100000 initrd=initramfs quiet BOOT=live splash initrd $(grub_device)/initramfs_$(grub_device_string) title Selecthd test configfile $(grub_device)/boot/grub/choose/selecthd.lst title findp test configfile $(grub_device)/boot/grub/choose/selectpart.lst title set SGD variables and boot SGD configfile $(grub_device)/boot/sgd/menu.lst

That should be it, now we will make turn our directory into an .iso file with a magic genisoimage command, like this,
Code:

herman@red:~$ genisoimage -R -b boot/grub/stage2_eltorito  \ -input-charset iso8859-1  \ -V "SUPERGPARTPUPPY"  \ -no-emul-boot \ -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -o supergpartpuppy.iso supergpartpuppy

That command will creat a new .iso file called supergpartpuppy.iso

And finally, we can put a blank CD-RW disk in the CD drive, or one that doesn't contain anything important that we'll ever need.
Then we right click on the new supergpartpuppy.iso file and click 'write to disk'.

When your new CD is made, reboot and try it out!   :)


NOTE:
If you are at the Main Menu and then you choose GParted-Clonezilla, you will get the GParted- Clonezilla menu which is very big and long. There are 24 options there, but you can only see half of them. Since you can't see the whole list at once, you need to scroll down with your arrow keys to see remaining options. There are some good options there like load GParted LiveCD in RAM and run from there, and the titles to select for Clonezilla, that you wouldn't want to miss.  So remember to scroll down and take a look around on that whole menu.

TIP:
Both GParted LiveCD and Clonezilla have options to run in your RAM if you want them to, like Puppy Linux. That means you can eject the CD after one of those is running and free your CD or DVD drive for something else if you need to.

CAUTION:
There are powerful heavy duty professional quality softwares in this CD.
These softwares are not toys and should be used with proper care and respect.