General Category > Boot Managers

How to install Plop Boot Manager 5 on Linux

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jcalbinana:
I would like to install the Plop Boot Manager 5 on a very old computer  without USB BIOS compatibility.

The computer has a linux installed but I do not understandt how to install it

Elmar:
Your Linux is started by a boot manager. Mostly its Grub. You can add the Plop Boot Manager as additional boot option to the boot menu.

https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/plpbt.bin.html#rungrub

Note: There is a difference betwee Grub and Grub2.

Grunchy:
Elmar, hey. I have successfully set up PLoP to boot MS-DOS from primary hda1, Windows 98 from primary hda2, Windows XP from primary hda3... but have not had success getting PLoP to boot Lubuntu from hda4 L1 (hda4 = first extended partition, hda4 L1 is the first logical partition formatted ext4 mount point "/", hda4 L2 is the second logical partition which is used for Linux Swap).

I have installed Lubuntu 16.04 over and over into the extended partition hda4 L1, and made sure the partition definition for hda4 in PLoP is 100% correct, but every single time it comes back with:

Warning:
No valid bootsector signature
Continue boot? [y/n]

Of course y does nothing except put a flashing cursor, n just goes back to PLoP.

My Linux boot profile is

HDA
hda1
hda2
hda3
*80h hda4 L1 (boot to first logical partition of hda4)

HDB, HDC, HDD are all set to "don't touch" because my laptop doesn't have more than 1 hard drive (Toshiba Satellite 2400 circa 2002, 1.6 GHz Pentium 4, 512 MB DDR Ram, 3 x USB1, 160GB Hard Drive at HDA).

If I boot to the Lubuntu live CD and check what's at hda4 L1 there's definitely "boot" flag set and there's /boot/grub stuff there.

Elmar:
Hello Grunchy,

I tried your setup. I know what the problem is and I have a solutions for you.

Lubuntu comes with Grub2 and the problem is that Grub2 can not be installed to a boot sector. Maybe its possible and I don't know how.

Instead of Grub2 you can use extlinux (part of syslinux) as Linux loader. The simplest configuration is to create the file /syslinux.cfg

--- Code: ---prompt 0
timeout 1
default a

label a
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-4.15.0-45-generic
append initrd=/boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-45-generic root=/dev/sda5

--- End code ---

Install extlinux to the boot sector of sda5 with "extlinux --install / --device /dev/sda5"

Now, Linux will boot from the Plop Boot Manager with *80h hda4 L1.

Note: You have to do a "sudo apt install extlinux".

Grunchy:
Elmar, hey that looks like really good information.

I had installed Lubuntu "/" on /dev/sda5 and "swap" on /dev/sda6.

However I cannot boot into the Lubuntu to try the commands you gave me.

So I booted into the Lubuntu installer CD and called up LXTerminal, did the "sudo apt install extlinux" and then "extlinux --install / --device /dev/sda5"

It came back with:
extlinux: not a fat, ntfs, ext2/3/4, btrfs, xfs orufs1/2 filesystem: /

So then I tried something like this, I dunno:

sudo mkdir /mnt/hdd
sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt/hdd
extlinux --install /mnt/hdd --device /dev/sda5

It came back:

/mnt/hdd is device /dev/sda5
extlinux: cannot open device /dev/sda5

So...?

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