Adding a USB thumb drive to GRUB? SOLVED

[Member srgilbert]

I think I’ve got this figured out, please see below.

Ok, this is probably a weird question, but here goes. I have an old HP laptop that I have setup as a dual boot with Windows XP(!) and antiX on the same 100 gb hard drive using the standard grub menu to choose.

One quirk of this computer is it does NOT have a BIOS option to boot from USB even though it has three USB2 ports. You can only boot from the optical drive, hard drive or lan. What’s weirder still is that if you disconnect the hard drive it WILL boot from a USB! I’ve worked around this when needed by using Plops loader from a CD. What I want is to be able to run LibreELEC for KODI from USB without having to use Plops. I know KODI can run in antiX but the version that installs is too advanced for this system I guess so it won’t run. From UBS I can run an older version just fine.

Anyway, is there an easy way to ADD a listing to the grub so I could theoretically leave the usb in and choose it as needed?

Thanks

• This topic was modified 1 year ago by srgilbert.

[Anonymous]

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If the computer can NOT boot from usb, this is actually a witless question.

Otherwise GRUB would have to be installed on the usb stick.

[Member srgilbert]

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I thing I’m making some progress. I have a little experience with Grub Customizer so I installed that and am able to add a boot entry but I can’t seem to figure out what settings I need to make it work.

[Member srgilbert]

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Jesus, I hope your attitude isn’t indicative of the rest of this forum.

Grub Customizer absolutely does let me choose the directories on the USB and attempts to load, but I’m not giving it the specific information it wants yet. I don’t know enough about the file structure but I’m determined to figure it out.

[Member PPC]

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srgilbert wrote:

Jesus, I hope your attitude isn’t indicative of the rest of this forum.

Like you said in your original post, your question is “weird” and, like male said (although in a bit of a harsh tone), something that seems impossible in the way you asked.
I do know that a Plop executable can be added to Grub (but I never tested that), so, you get it to indirectly boot from USB drives…

Don’t be afraid to ask strange questions – sometimes it’s the way we get to find out new things!

Please, if you do have success with adding that feature to Grub (either with Plop or using any other way) do share the way you did it – many users have devices that are unable to boot from USB (I have one such 32 bits HP laptop).

P.

• This reply was modified 1 year ago by PPC.

[Member srgilbert]

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Here’s what I can say so far. In Grub Customizer, there is an option to add a new entry to the Grub boot list.

A menu pops up with the following options:

Name: (this is blank to type the name in)

Type: (a drop down menu with Linux/Linux0-ISO/Chainloader/Memtest/Other/(Script codes) – Changing this determines the choices below it. I chose Linux as OpenElec is a Linux based OS.)

Partition: (a drop down with all the drives/partitions attached, including my USB)

Initial ramdisk: /initrd.img (This is what it defaults to, but doesn’t seem correct.)

Linux image: /vmlinuz (again, this is the default)

Kernel params: (this is blank by default

Boot Sequence (this is a large text box that shows the code for the changes you make as they I’m assuming they will appear in the grub config file.

So, I’m able to direct it to the USB and the proper boot directory for OpenElec. If I leave the rest at default I get the message
“error: file /vmlinuz’ not found error: you need to load the kernel first.

I’m assuming in the Linux image line in the menu is for the the kernel, so I changed that to /KERNEL which should be correct.

Reboot gives me a new error

error: file /initrd.img’ not found

So it’s looking for an initial ramdisk file and this is where I get stuck.

[Member srgilbert]

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Ok, I think I have this figured out, it just needed the right syntax.

Using information I found here, modified slightly due to different files system paths.

https://www.instructables.com/Dual-Boot-Libre-ELEC-and-Ubuntu-161/

In Grub Customizer I used the “add” function to create a new entry and named it Kodi, chose “Other” for the type and typed in

search --set=root --label System --hint hd1,1

linux /KERNEL boot=LABEL=System disk=LABEL=Storage quiet

Hit OK, saved the configuration and rebooted.

Now I have a Kodi entry in the Grub and it boots into OpenElec if chosen.

If I remove the flash drive, it remains in the Grub menu, but obviously errors if you choose it.

[Member srgilbert]

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I think my next challenge will be just installing LibreElec (the successor to OpenElec) to a partition and running from there, but that’s another day.

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