Compiling Grub4dos version 0.4.6a

I am considering putting Grub4dos back into the menu of EasyOS, for the convenience of those who have older tradional-BIOS computers. Like me! -- and another one just acquired, a Compaq Presario, see post a couple of days ago. These old computers are fine for running Easy, so I do need to keep offering tools to support them.

Puppy Forum member 'shinobar' is the guy who has developed Grub4dos PETs for Puppy Linux:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=51697

Which is great, shinobar has supported Grub4dos for years, bringing out improvements, even in 2018. However, the PET is based upon Grub4dos 0.4.4, the last official release before the project died, which has a problem with the ext4 filesystem:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=111376

...there is a workaround, however, one post mentioned a fork of Grub4dos that has fix the 64bit ext4 problem. I located the project page for that fork:

https://github.com/chenall/grub4dos/tree/0.4.6a

...good, an active project. Downloaded it, in EasyOS 64-bit 0.9.9, tried to configure the source:

# ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --build=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu

Got a configure error, found the fix here:

https://github.com/chenall/grub4dos/issues/160

Not there yet, got another error, configure wants a "mulitlib gcc" for x86_64, which mine in EasyOS isn't. So, booted up Easy Pyro 32-bit 0.9.6, that was created earlier in 2018, now it configured and compiled:

# ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --build=i386-pc-linux-gnu
# make
# new2dir make install

The plan is to put those files into shinobar's PET:

http://shinobar.server-on.net/puppy/opt/grub4dos-0.4.4.v1.9.3.pet

...um, there is a "v1.9.4" PET, but not so sure about that as it has some woof-CE integration changes.

Will this merge work? Dunno yet. 

Tags: easy