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Running SR6.1 on Linux. Correct procedure?

#1

m3110w

m3110w

I'm not a technical person, I only know the basics. My only computer is an AMD Ryzen laptop running Linux Opensuse Tumbleweed. It has no dual boot and no Windows. Earlier I was able to get ReadSpeed running on my laptop using the ReadSpeed image ISO and Legacy mode. I have downloaded sr61.exe onto my laptop. Here's my guess at the steps to get SR6.1 running on my system:

* Use a Linux based Image Burning Tool to convert sr61.exe to an image ISO.
* Use a Linux based Image Burner to burn this image ISO onto a USB drive.
* Change my boot mode to "Legacy".
* Turn off laptop and insert USB drive. Then power on and hit key to trigger boot from USB.
* SR6.1 starts up and I'm all set.

Am I missing something? Anything incorrect?

UPDATE: I ran the above steps and didn't work. Just got a black screen with a single flashing cursor. Anyone have a link to the correct steps to do this? Can only Steve G successfully convert his sr61.exe file into an ISO image that's bootable?


#2

Steve

Steve

m3110w said:
Use a Linux based Image Burning Tool to convert sr61.exe to an image ISO.
Click to expand...
That first step is the problem. There's no way to just “convert” SR61.EXe into an ISO image. Running SR61.EXE under Windows will allow it to create a bootable ISO image. Though, for that matter, it will also allow it to directly create a bootable USB... which is your end goal.

Once I get caught up with all of the release work surrounding v6.1 (Documentation, creating an eMail system, etc.) and the dust has settled a bit, I will be adding direct downloading of user-licensed .ISO and .IMG images specifically so that those without access to Windows (Linux and old Mac owners) will be able to create bootable media without even briefly needing Windows.

Until then the best solution would be for you to briefly borrow someone's Windows machine to create a bootable USB drive.

Since SpinRite does not "install" in any way, this is pretty simple. You could have it on the drive you want to install to: Bring it to their Windows machine. Copy it from that USB drive to their Desktop. Run it from there (with Admin privilege since it needs to deeply reformat that USB drive.) Have SpinRite install itself into that USB drive (it brings FreeDOS, a text editor and is pre-configured to run on boot). Then terminate SpinRite and delete it from that user's Windows Desktop.

You will now have that same SpinRite ON that USB stick... but the stick will now be bootable. (y)

It's not the most elegant solution, which is why I'll be offering direct .ISO and .IMG downloads as soon as possible. But it's probably the best solution for the time being.


#3

m3110w

m3110w

Steve said:
but the stick will not be bootable. (y)
Click to expand...
I'm confused; if the stick is not bootable, then how is it of any use to me in my goal to run SR on my Linux laptop? What am I missing?

In any case, I can wait til you put out the IMG ISO files. Will you make an announcement somewhere when the ISO IMG files are available for download?

Thanks. Cheers.


#4

Steve

Steve

Darnit! TYPO!! I meant that the stick will NOW be bootable! :)

(I've edited my posting so that others are not confused.)


#5

m3110w

m3110w

OK, thanks for the update. It's ok to save your typos for forum posts while keeping them out of Spinrite. :);)


#6

Steve

Steve

I'm going to clean all this up shortly (now that I've fixed the typo.) Thanks!


#7

T

TProbst67

Steve said:
Darnit! TYPO!! I meant that the stick will NOW be bootable! :)

(I've edited my posting so that others are not confused.)
Click to expand...

@Steve

Is it possible to boot up with a Windows-PE environment and run the SR WinSpin on that?

Regards,
Thomas


#8

Steve

Steve

TProbst67 said:
Is it possible to boot up with a Windows-PE environment and run the SR WinSpin on that?
Click to expand...
My guess would be that it should work, though I'm unaware of whether anyone has tried it.


#9

0x6A7232

0x6A7232

Steve said:
My guess would be that it should work, though I'm unaware of whether anyone has tried it.
Click to expand...
I can confirm it works, I just tested it. I used the Windows PE included with Medicat 21.12 but they also have a smaller image that is only the barebones PE. The full version of Medicat with all tools included is over 21GB. Mini Windows is 4GB, and the stripped down version of Mini Windows is 1GB. The last versions of Mini Windows that I'm aware of is 19.10 .

I use grubfm to boot the .wim stored on my hard disk (NTBOOT method), but you won't have an issue if you are booting via a removable USB device (just make sure you remove & reinsert the correct one for SpinRite to format!). If you need to download any of the above you can find them on GBATemp.net forums.

There's also a list of Windows PE builds here: https://www.geckoandfly.com/32030/bootable-windows-pe-recovery-repair/

If you already have a PE in mind, I'd be curious as to which you usually run. I used to run Mini XP from Hiren's or FalconFour's UBCD, and have since switched to Medicat.


#10

m3110w

m3110w

Steve said:
Since SpinRite does not "install" in any way, this is pretty simple. You could have it on the drive you want to install to: Bring it to their Windows machine. Copy it from that USB drive to their Desktop. Run it from there (with Admin privilege since it needs to deeply reformat that USB drive.) Have SpinRite install itself into that USB drive (it brings FreeDOS, a text editor and is pre-configured to run on boot). Then terminate SpinRite and delete it from that user's Windows Desktop.

You will now have that same SpinRite ON that USB stick... but the stick will now be bootable.
Click to expand...
I followed the steps and it works good. I got SR6.1 working on my Linux Opensuse Tumbleweed laptop. Nice. Looking forward to using SR6.1 on all my old drives and laptops.


#11

Steve

Steve

m3110w said:
I followed the steps and it works good. I got SR6.1 working on my Linux Opensuse Tumbleweed laptop. Nice. Looking forward to using SR6.1 on all my old drives and laptops.
Click to expand...
Thanks for your confirmation feedback!!


#12

ThePythonicCow

ThePythonicCow

0x6A7232 said:
I can confirm it works, I just tested it.
Click to expand...
I too can confirm it works. I only run Linux, but my son runs Windows, so I put sr61.exe on a thumb drive, and had him run it on his Windows box to rewrite that thumb drive as a bootable SR61 drive, which I have successfully used to deep stress test some more disk drives (8Tb used spinning rust from cloud data centers are cheap these days, as they upgrade to bigger or faster drives). My new Intel boxes don't allow old style BIOS/MBR booting, but a sufficiently old Intel box does, or any AMD with CSM boot enabled does.


#13

Steve

Steve

Linux guys: I'm working to offer a directly downloadable licensed SR61 image file that can simply be copied to any USB drive and booted. That will eliminate the need to "borrow" a Windows machine. (y)


#14

m3110w

m3110w

Steve said:
Linux guys: I'm working to offer a directly downloadable licensed SR61 image file that can simply be copied to any USB drive and booted. That will eliminate the need to "borrow" a Windows machine. (y)
Click to expand...
Cool. I'll throw the SR6.1 ISO onto my Ventoy and add it to my toolbox. :)


#15

A

AlanD

IIRC there is a problem with running SpinRite via Ventoy. The memory model that SR uses does not work with Ventoy.

Steve said the following in a Newsgroup posting:-

<quote>
Ventoy and SRv6.1 are incompatible, plain and simple. And given
that a workaround to force compatibility creates a true mess to
allow something that's also inherently wrong for SpinRite, just
doesn't make sense. So that's not something I'm going to do.

This posting talking about Ventoy has the subject "Easy2Boot is
Astounding" because it is. Jason mentioned it earlier here. And
before I started this posting I took a look at it. It is a full
superset of what Ventoy offers and is FAR FAR superior.

It really is amazing: https://easy2boot.xyz/

So, a lovely solution for anyone who is certain they do not want
the burden of "carrying around" a second USB SpinRite drive,
which allows logs to be saved, would be to look at Easy2Boot.

I've verified that it boots SpinRite v6.1 without any trouble
and WOW does it offer so much more!
</quote>


#16

m3110w

m3110w

AlanD said:
The memory model that SR uses does not work with Ventoy.
Click to expand...
No prob. I'll make a dedicated drive for SR6.1.

I made a reminder to research E2B, looks interesting.


#17

ThePythonicCow

ThePythonicCow

AlanD said:
Steve said the following in a Newsgroup posting:-

<quote>
This posting talking about Ventoy has the subject "Easy2Boot is
Astounding" because it is.
</quote>
Click to expand...
I'd guess that you were working with Easy2Boot on Windows.

It's not so easy on Linux. Easy2Boot for Linux has some executable files built about a decade ago, against a mix of 32 bit and 64 bit libraries and Linux kernel interface, which I am still working to recreate. No off the shelf distro that I know of offhand provides that particular concoction in a current release; but I may be able to work with the "multi-architecture" feature of Debian to construct what's needed.

Even the creator of Easy2Boot recommends using Windows, not Linux, to construct the initial device, acknowledging that it's harder on Linux, and not spending time that I see off hand working the Linux solution in recent years.

This might be an ideal problem for a Snap or Flatpak based solution. Meanwhile if anyone else happens to find themselves walking down this same road, they should give the following file in the "ZIP Easy2Boot for Linux and XP users" zip file a close read: _ISO/docs/linux_utils/ReadMe_fmt.sh.txt


#18

m3110w

m3110w

ThePythonicCow said:
It's not so easy on Linux.
Click to expand...
Uh oh. I'm Linux only and I'm not a technical person, so I scratched E2B off my list.


#19

ThePythonicCow

ThePythonicCow

m3110w said:
Uh oh. I'm Linux only and I'm not a technical person, so I scratched E2B off my list.
Click to expand...
I trust my bits with Steve Gibson's code - he's talented, experienced, and more than a bit obsessive with his, and our, bits. Awesome.

The Easy2Boot author doesn't sell his bit solution, Easy2Boot, per se. Rather he sells his books, his writings about his bit solutions. It seems to me that he's uses the wider potential applicability of his Easy2Boot solution, rather than its more narrowly focused perfected applicability, to attract customers for his books. This would be the reverse of Steve, who uses the revenue from his more focused solution to fund his research and discussions into wider areas.


#20

Steve

Steve

ThePythonicCow said:
I'd guess that you were working with Easy2Boot on Windows.
Click to expand...
Indeed. Yes.


#21

ThePythonicCow

ThePythonicCow

For the record, in case someone else finds something here worth pursuing further, the 32 and 64 bit ELF executable's in Easy2Boot's Linux variant are apparently recompilations of Tinybit's bootlace and UltraDefrag's udefrag. Both are open or public source, with variants discoverable with easy Web searches, and have been around for perhaps 10 or 15 years.

Bootlace installs grub4dos to a MBR or PBR (Master or Partition Boot Record), and udefrag defragments files on over a dozen file system types. Creating such bootable images for CD's and USB thumb drives requires writing such boot records, and will require having the data in certain bootable file images on the drive to be contiguous (a single extent, hence defrag'd).

I've wandered too far off the topic of this thread, and too far off the tasks I should be doing. So I should stop looking into Easy2Boot on Linux now.


#22

xplora1a

xplora1a

m3110w said:
I'm not a technical person, I only know the basics. My only computer is an AMD Ryzen laptop running Linux Opensuse Tumbleweed. It has no dual boot and no Windows. Earlier I was able to get ReadSpeed running on my laptop using the ReadSpeed image ISO and Legacy mode. I have downloaded sr61.exe onto my laptop. Here's my guess at the steps to get SR6.1 running on my system:

* Use a Linux based Image Burning Tool to convert sr61.exe to an image ISO.
* Use a Linux based Image Burner to burn this image ISO onto a USB drive.
* Change my boot mode to "Legacy".
* Turn off laptop and insert USB drive. Then power on and hit key to trigger boot from USB.
* SR6.1 starts up and I'm all set.

Am I missing something? Anything incorrect?

UPDATE: I ran the above steps and didn't work. Just got a black screen with a single flashing cursor. Anyone have a link to the correct steps to do this? Can only Steve G successfully convert his sr61.exe file into an ISO image that's bootable?
Click to expand...
If you get one of the release candidate releases, then these are DOS executables, so with an DOS image on an ISO you can boot into DOS and then run the .exe dos program while Steve gets the direct iso image sorted on his side.


#23

m3110w

m3110w

xplora1a said:
If you get one of the release candidate releases, then these are DOS executables, so with an DOS image on an ISO you can boot into DOS and then run the .exe dos program while Steve gets the direct iso image sorted on his side.
Click to expand...
I was able to borrow a Windows computer and create some bootable SR6.1 USB drives. I'm all set.


#24

Steve

Steve

I am currently working to create an ".IMG" file that can simply be transferred (with 'dd' or Ubuntu's writing tool) to ANY USB thumb drive and then booted. That will be online soon. (y)


#25

D

DaveQB

Steve said:
I am currently working to create an ".IMG" file that can simply be transferred (with 'dd' or Ubuntu's writing tool) to ANY USB thumb drive and then booted. That will be online soon. (y)
Click to expand...

Just a quick question one on this. The now downloadable IMG file, does this contain a partition table (and thus should be written to the USB drive entirely) or is it a partition (and thus written to an existing partition)?

Thanks again for all of the fantastic work you do Steve (utils, Spinrite and Security Now).


#26

ColbyBouma

ColbyBouma

DaveQB said:
The now downloadable IMG file, does this contain a partition table (and thus should be written to the USB drive entirely) or is it a partition (and thus written to an existing partition)?
Click to expand...
It should be written to the drive. Something like:

Code: 
sudo dd if=spinrite.img of=/dev/sdb

Make SURE sdb is your USB drive! dd will happily overwrite any drive you tell it to.


#27

0x6A7232

0x6A7232

ColbyBouma said:
It should be written to the drive. Something like:

Code: 
sudo dd if=spinrite.img of=/dev/sdb

Make SURE sdb is your USB drive! dd will happily overwrite any drive you tell it to.
Click to expand...
You can check your current layout with
Code: 
lsblk
- keep in mind your layout may change between boots, so be sure to check each time before using dd.

Alternatively pull up GParted and look at the drives in the drop-down at the top right.


#28

0x6A7232

0x6A7232

I forgot to add: IIRC Easy2Boot uses imgptn files or somesuch. You may be able to use the .img file as a drop-in for E2B, or be able to with some small bit of work.

Then you won't have to have a dedicated flash drive containing only SR.


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