Easier frugal install of EasyOS

March 12, 2022 — BarryK

There are tutorials on how to install EasyOS to a hard drive partition, for example:

https://easyos.org/install/easy-frugal-installation.html

Basically, it involves getting 'vmlinuz', 'initrd' and 'easy.sfs' out of the downloaded 'easy*.img.gz' file, placing them in a folder in a HD partition with a Linux filesystem (preferably ext4), then open up 'initrd' to edit the 'BOOT_SPECS' file, then make an entry in the boot manager, GRUB or whatever.

However, these steps can be simplified. I introduced these kernel boot parameters in 2019:

https://bkhome.org/news/201907/live-cd-is-back-plus-zram-support-plus-partition-override.html

...ignore the "live-CD" part of that post. It is those new kernel boot parameters that matter.

The question came up recently on the forum, whether it is really necessary to open up 'initrd' and edit the 'BOOT_SPECS' file. I replied, no, there are kernel parameters that will override:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=46795#p46795

Quoting here:

boot_dev or boot_uuid or boot_label
boot_dir
wkg_dev or wkg_uuid or wkg_label
wkg_dir

Where the uuids and labels are got from 'blkid' utility. Example on my PC:

# blkid /dev/sda7
/dev/sda7: LABEL="hdd48gb4" UUID="0d89cca1-48c6-44f5-89f6-76162f062e7c" TYPE="ext4"

Note that if the frugal install is in sda7, then boot_dev and wkg_dev would be "sda7" without the "/dev/".

Booting from a usb-stick, where the sda<number> can change, use _uuid or _label instead.

Forum member 'retiredt00' posted an example GRUB entry:

menuentry “EasyOS” {
    volume test2
    loader /vmlinuz
    initrd /initrd
    options "rw  boot_uuid=8f9b1091-626b-49c5-bdc2-5219766988dc boot_dir=/ wkg_uuid=ad2e0c34-3466-4fba-9c56-217aab2cfb70 wkg_dir=Easy"
}

...of course, you can make those boot_dir and wkg_dir anything you want. For example, if you have 'vmlinuz', 'initrd' and 'easy.sfs' in folder /Easy, then set boot_dir=Easy (no need for a leading "/", nor a trailing "/").

These kernel boot parameters are not mentioned anywhere in easyos.org, will have to rectify that.

Tags: easy