How to setup partitions,flags,mounting points, install boot manager usb stick ?

[Skybuck]

(I want to "burn" Game Over ISO to usb stick, and then install from usb stick to same usb stick, and then boot into usb stick full OS):

What I have tried so far:

Burn Game Over ISO to usb stick/fat32 4 GB partition.
Resize FAT32 to 4 GB in installer.

Use free space to create:

Primary partition needed with mounting point set to: \
Swap partition needed with file system linuxswap

Then I have to set install boot manager ?

Different options for install boot manager occur.

Something with "install the usb stick mbr/dev/dba"
Something with "install to \"
And some others...

There is also a mini partition with 36 kb if I choose "Add fixes for old BIOSes" in RUFUS.

I am unsure if flags need to be set as well ?!

I tried setting \boot to primary partition.

I tried setting swap for linuxswap.

So far the things I tried resulted in the old system booting into the live cd/installer but not into the supposedly full install ?!

So I think it's not booting into the correct partition ???

So how do I setup the installation so that on reboot it will boot into the correct/full installation partition and now the live cd/fat32 ?

I also tried deleting the fat32 and mini partition... but during install it will say: "in mounting use" so that does not seem possible ?

(During boot of livecd there is also "toram" option ? To Ram ? What does this do ? Does it copy the entire ISO to RAM ? and then install from there ? Would this allow me to delete far32 and mini parittion ? I will also ask this in seperate thread, so if you don't know then just cut/skip it)

Bye for now,
  Skybuck.

[paxmark1]

First - is it 64 bit? I am guessing it is.  If it is not sparky is mostly just 64 bit now.  What version of windows do you have and is it 64 bit or 32 bit?

Which game over:  Running the non-rolling more stable is often better for those newer to linux and with the age of the processor using code from 2017 is more than new enough. 

1.   2009    You might not need to use UEFI.  I did not need it in 2008, I did in 2015.  **  Does modern Rufus only do UEFI installs?  I do not know. 

2.  Have you read the Rufus FAQ   
https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/wiki/FAQ#Who_are_you_Who_or_what_is_Akeo

I am not that familiar with it, I have been putting iso's on usb's with linux only for a long time.  I have skimmed  his FAQ, it is open source and seems well enough documented.

Do you plan to add Linux persistent partition support

So you need the 3.8  Rufus version to get persistance.  I have not  tried for persistance in a usb in over a decade.   

ChangeLog

Version 3.8 (2019.09.16) [BUGFIX RELEASE]

    Fix regression where some ISOs (Debian) would produce a Syslinux error when booting in BIOS mode
    Fix potential 0xC0030057 errors when trying to create a persistent partitions on a non-FIXED drive


Version 3.7 (2019.09.09)

    Finalize persistent partition support for Debian and Ubuntu [EXPERIMENTAL]:
        Debian with persistence should work out of the box with any recent Debian Live ISO.
        Ubuntu with persistence should also work IF using a post 2019.08.01 ISO (such as daily-live).
        Note that, because of bug #1489855, trying to use persistence with Ubuntu ISOs that were released before August 2019 will only result in rescue mode during boot - You have been warned!
        Other distros may work with persistence as long as they use a Debian-like or Ubuntu-like method, and, in the case of Ubuntu-like, if they use casper with the #1489855 bugfix.
        Important: Persistence and ext formatting support should still be considered EXPERIMENTAL at this stage.
    Add cheat mode (Alt
    ) to switch between percent/speed/ETA on some operations [EXPERIMENTAL]
    Report SuperSpeed+ devices in the log (Come on USB-IF, just add "Ludicrous Speed" already!)
    Fix UI checkboxes (Extended label, Fixes for old BIOSes) being cleared on START
    Fix Can't mount GUID volume regression when creating Windows To Go drives
    Fix Volume label is invalid error with empty labels on Windows 7
    Fix stale progress bar during standalone ext2/ext3 formatting
    Fix an extraction failure with R-Drive Image bootable ISOs
    Disable ISO mode for Pop!_OS
    Other cosmetic and internal improvements

For your stated goal elsewhere of running a Star Wars game from 2017, 4 GB memory, and a slower CPU will slow - but another bottleneck will be using a USB for the OS. T h a t will be even s l o w e r.   And if that game is designed to run on windoze origanally, with your set up it would run faster in straight windoze than in wine, play on linux, virtualbox, qemu/kvm, etc.

That is it for me, I don't game. 

Please do not start anymore threads on this, keep it in one thread. 

For copying and pasting in a terminal, Ctl-Shift-C and Ctl-Shift-V and needed - Ctl-C does not work in a terminal, at least not in linux.   

[Skybuck]

1. Sparky Linux has to be 64 bit for 64 bit gaming. (Star Wars Battlefront 2 from 2017 is 64 bit only as far as I know)

(I have mostly windows 7, 64 bit)

2. Spark Linux Game Over edition rolling was the only game over edition I saw on download page.

3. Need BIOS, I don't think old computer supports EUFI.

4. Examined Rufus FAQ, nothing about BIOS fix, if there were information in FAQ about BIOS fix it would show up in google search if information is somewhat older, google search returned nothing. I will try and find rufus developer e-mail and send him/her an e-mail and ask about this cause there is apperently no information about these fixes. (Addition: Github issue seems a good alternative to e-mail so I will try that.)

5. Persistence is weird. If full OS is installed to USB it should already be persistent ?!?

6. Latest rufus 3.8.1580 (portable) is used.

7. So far the USB Stick/OS performs very fast. Atto disk/usb benchmarks shows 33 megabyte/sec which is enough for loading GUIs and Gaming so I am not worried about any slowness. It might run even faster than from disks. Perhaps USB stick can do more seeks per second. Unsure about this though. (It's an USB flash stick). USB 2.0 is bottlenecking the flash disk.

8. Windows has many problems with this game. Laptop radeon drivers are not advanced enough to run this game. It runs partially then crashes to desktop. I am hoping that (generic?) linux drivers might be more advanced and more recent.  Or perhaps linux has software emulation of drivers. Faking driver version was necessary to get the game started. On windows 7/old computer it doesn't run at all, no errors or reasons are given, so it's mystifieing. Also here I am hoping linux reports better errors has better logging and this is already true to same extent.
So using linux as a debugging tool could also be very interesting.

9. I will not start any more seperate threads, this current seperation is enough.

10. My main question is how to setup the partitions, flags, mounting points and install boot manager under pretty normal circumstances, so that I can rule out this issue.

11. I also tried Fedora 31 installer, it wasn't as good as Sparky Linux. Fedora 31 was trying to be too smart, too automated and it ran very slow, and the buttons don't disappear after clicking which is very dangerous because I might click them again and might accidently click on a button that pops up, so this made me very nervous.

12. However I did learn something from Fedora, it has the same boot problem as Sparky Linux on this computer. This convinced me to try the boot options: "debug=apic" <- this didn't do much. But: "noapic" boot options did work to boot fedora 31. I am not sure how this boot option can be set with Sparky Linux but I will try again. I am not sure if this option will be necessary after full OS install, would be nice if there was a way to set this in some config file somewhere or so ?

14. I think control-A works in terminal not sure ? I guess I simply selected the text and scrolled down to copy & paste everything into a log file with some basic editor that was included with OS.

Bye,
  Skybuck.

[Skybuck]

Hi,

I managed to install Sparky Linux perfectly on USB Stick as far as I am concerned by using the following method:

1. Virtualize the CPU,RAM,CD/DVD drive in VMWare (VirtualBox of Oracle will probably also work). (Create a new virtual machine)

2. Use or Add the USB Stick as a harddisk. Use a certain windows command to find the physicaldrive number necessary for vmware.

3. Install from ISO/Disk inside virtual machine to USB stick.

4. Press Escape or other buttons to get into boot menu, boot from CD/DVD/ISO.

5. Once in installation program:

Create new partition table to wipe any old ones, make sure it's the USB stick.

Create primary partition with mounting point \

Create linuxswap partition.

The primary parition size number has to be manually calculated and made a bit smaller to reserve free space for the linux swap parition.

This is all that was necessary to install Sparky Linux to the USB Stick.

Once it's done boot main computer, go into boot menu and boot from usb stick via removeables or harddisks depending on where boot menu puts it.

To boot Sparky Linux successfully on my old system I had to simply add a boot option to the back of the linux boot line:

noapic

Has to be added, this can be done on menu when sparky linux starts up it's boot selection, press E, carefull navigate to  where line says: "Linux /boot" and such... and add noapic to the end of that line. (noapic with small letters)

Press control-x and sparky linux boots fine.

Run installer.

During installation install grub to 'dev\sba\' and '\' system.

That's how I did it.

This will work.... I don't know yet how to make noapic to boot options persistent but this is OK for now.

To install nvidia drivers there is a tutorial on youtube as well, for installing into debian.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUsnygrNUMw

Basically, two commands necessary:

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r|sed 's,[^-]*-[^-]*-,,')

sudo apt-get install nvidia-settings nvidia-driver nvidia-opencl-common
or (for hybrid graphics chipset):
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install bumblebee-nvidia primus primus-libs:i386

Now I have new issue though starting the game though, but it don't belong here so I will make new thread elsewhere.

Bye,
  Skybuck.