Cheatcodes for Porteus. ======================================= spacebar = pagedown q = quit Boot parameters (also known as cheatcodes) are used to affect the booting process of Porteus. Some of them are common for all Linuxes, others are specific for Porteus only. You can use them to disable desired kinds of hardware detection, to start Porteus from a harddisk, to skip the login prompt and start GUI, etc. Reboot your computer and wait several seconds until the graphical Porteus logo appears with a boot menu (it's there usually for less then 9 seconds). Choose your desired menu entry and hit Tab, which will allow you to edit the command line. Add your desired boot argument from the list below to affect booting the way you like. Here's an example of what the boot line would look like, adding the noauto, copy2ram and toroot cheatcodes to a standard Porteus boot option (which already uses several cheatcodes by default): APPEND initrd=/boot/initrd.xz vga=791 autoexec=xconf;telinit~4 changes=/porteus/ noauto copy2ram toroot These cheatcodes can also be added to the APPEND line of your /boot/porteus.cfg entries (or other bootloader config files, if you don't use EXTLINUX or SYSLINUX) to apply them automatically on every boot. NOTE for LILO users: if you have installed the LILO bootloader, you will get a text interface instead of a graphical Porteus logo. A text menu with the standard boot options (KDE, LXDE, Always Fresh, etc) will appear. Use your arrow key to highlight your desired entry (if you are using the first entry (KDE), press down, then up to highlight KDE). The name of your boot option is added to the 'boot:' line, and you can type your cheatcodes after that. For example: boot: KDE debug noauto would boot into KDE with all of the standard codes used for KDE, plus debug and noauto. If you want to use LILO with custom cheatcodes at every boot without manually entering them each time, you must modify the /boot/syslinux/liloinst.sh script and then reinstall LILO with the modified script. SPECIAL NOTE FOR USING CHEATCODES WITH 'LABEL' AND 'UUID': If you specify a LABEL or UUID with a cheatcode, remember that all portions of these commands are case sensitive. You should use a unique label for each of your partitions if you wish to use device labels with your cheatcodes. Use the 'blkid' command to view your device's UUID and LABEL. Using UUID and LABEL can be quite handy because they are unique to your device, and your data will be found and properly mapped on different hardware configurations. --------------------------------------- List of available cheatcodes (in alphabetical order): acpi=off Disables use of acpi (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) autoexec=... autoexec=startx autoexec=xconf;startx autoexec=xconf;startx;reboot ... Execute specified command(s) before logging in to Porteus (i.e. before going multiuser). In this example, skip the Porteus login prompt and automatically start the XWindow system. Use semicolons (;) as command separators. ... Porteus will not reboot automatically after the command(s) finish, so if you'd like to restart, specify 'reboot' or 'poweroff' as the last command. ... If you need to use spaces in the commandline, replace them with ~. For example, autoexec=echo~Shutting~power;poweroff will echo your text with spaces instead of ~. changes=/dev/device changes=/dev/device/file.dat changes=/path/ changes=/path/file.dat changes=/dev/device/path/ changes=LABEL:YourLabelName/path changes=UUID:STrING-0F-ChARACtERS/path/file.dat ... All changes made in Porteus are kept in memory until you reboot. But with this boot parameter, you tell Porteus to use a device (or a file or directory) other than your memory for storing changes. You can, for example, format your disk partition /dev/sda1 with some Linux filesystem (eg. xfs) and then use changes=/dev/sda1 to store all changes to that disk. This way you won't loose your changes after reboot. ... If you use a file image instead of a device, and the image contains a valid filesystem, Porteus will mount it as a loop device and will store changes to it. Moreover if you don't specify the device where the file is stored, Porteus will try to find it on all your partitions. ... If you use a directory, Porteus will save changes to it (it will make a 'changes' subdirectory there). This should only be used for linux filesystems, if changes need to be saved to a FAT or NTFS partition, a '.dat' container file must be used. copy2ram ... Copy all files (all required and optional modules) to RAM. You'll need at least 320MB of RAM to do this and boot Porteus properly. (64-bit Porteus with KDE-4 requires at least 768MB of RAM for this) This will slow down the boot phase but it will speed up Porteus! debug ... Enable debug mode (and start an ash shell several times during the boot) hit Ctrl+D to continue booting every time the shell stops the boot process. delay=some_value ... To be used for devices which need extra time to settle up. Example: 'delay=5' will cause a 5 second delay before Porteus starts booting. extramod=/path/to_folder/with_modules extramod=/dev/device/path/to_folder/with_modules extramod=LABEL:YourLabelName/path/to_folder/with_modules extramod=UUID:STrING-0F-ChARACtERS/path/to_folder/with_modules ... This cheatcode lets you load modules from an external folder which is placed outside of the /porteus directory. Full path is not required, although it is recommended to avoid searching through all devices. Example: 'extramod=/mnt/sdb3/porteus/xzm' from_dev=/dev/sda1 from_dev=LABEL:YourLabelName from_dev=UUID:STrING-0F-ChARACtERS ... Loads Porteus from the specified device. This may be a device other than the device from which you are booting. This cheatcode also speeds up boot time because the init script searches for the Porteus data on the specified device first. from_dir=/path/to/folder ... This cheatcode provides a path to a directory where the Porteus ISO image has been unpacked. It can be used with the 'from_dev=' parameter to avoid searching through all available devices. Example: 'from_dev=/dev/sda6' 'from_dir=/linux/porteus-v09' will cause searching for *.sgn file in the /mnt/sda6/linux/porteus-v09/porteus folder first. from_iso=/path/to/image.iso from_iso=/dev/device/path/image.iso from_iso=LABEL:YourLabelName/path/to/image.iso from_iso=UUID:STrING-0F-ChARACtERS/path/to/image.iso ... This cheatcode can be used to boot from a Porteus ISO image directly. The full path to the ISO is not required although it is recommended to avoid searching through all devices. WARNING: You can't use it together with the 'from_dev=' parameter. Example: 'from_iso=/mnt/sda6/linux-images/latest-porteus.iso' fsck ... Enables a filesystem check for ext(2,3,4) and reiserfs partitions during boot time before anything is mounted by Porteus. Xfs does not need fsck as a check is performed automatically during the mount operation. iocharset=some_iocharset ... Same as 'lang=' parameter (see below), but applies to fat and iso9660 (CD,DVD) filesystems. A list of available iocharsets can be found in the /usr/doc/language/fat.txt file. Example: iocharset=iso8859-2 will cause mounting of fat/iso9660 filesystems with polish charset. lang=some_locale ... Specifies 'locale' option for ntfs filesystem and sets localization for the whole system when Language-Selection-Tool is not used. Example: lang=pl_PL will cause mounting of ntfs partition with polish charset. Please remember: If Porteus will be booted from nfts partition then nls support is reduced to utf8 encoding only. Porteus doesn't provide localized versions of initrd so please stick with utf8, remaster initrd or use some other filesystem for booting media if possible. load=module ... Load optional modules from /optional/ directory on the booting media. You can use full module name (module.xzm) or you can skip the extension. lxde ... This parameter will let you use lxde as the default desktop, rather than KDE. max_loop=some_value ... This parameter tells the kernel how many loop devices need to be created in advance during boot time. Example: max_loop=150 will give you 150 loop devices at startup, but this number is hardcoded into the kernel and you wont be able to create more. noauto ... List harddisks in fstab with 'noauto', so you have to mount every disk manually in order to access it. nocd ... Disable cdrom detection. nodma ... Disable DMA for all CD-ROMs and disks. noeject ... Do not eject CD/DVD disc during boot time and shutdown. NOTE: when the 'copy2ram' cheatcode is used with 'noeject', this will prevent the unmounting of your boot partition on all removable devices (CD/DVD disc, usb, card readers, etc). To eject the CD you will have to umount /mnt/sr0 manually and issue the command 'eject /dev/sr0' from a console. (This behavior is new in Porteus V1.0 Final). nohd ... Disable harddisk detection nohotplug ... Disable specified hardware autodetection in the case of hangups. None of your hardware will be detected, and you'll have to use the "pcimodules" command after logging in to Porteus and modprobe all needed modules from the list manually. noload=module noload=module[1];module[n] ... Disable loading of any modules specified. This affects all the modules on the Porteus CD, including /base and /modules, so using noload=kde will disable loading of all modules with 'kde' in the name. It is useful with the copy2ram cheatcode, because any un-used module is not copied to ram. nomagic ... Do not bind "magic folders" during boot time. Usefull when something went wrong with your Porteus configuration and you want to boot into true 'Always Fresh' mode. nomodeset ... Prevents the use of Kernel Mode Setting (high resolution in console mode) drivers. Be aware that intel, opensource radeon and nouveau drivers won't work without KMS in Graphical User Interface (GUI) mode. noswap ... Prevents using a swap partition. passwd=somepass passwd=ask ... Set root's password to "somepass", or ask (with =ask) for a new password during the boot, before starting porteus (don't worry, the new password won't be shown at the login screen) ramsize=some_value% ... Will let you set the custom size of root (/) aufs partition. Default value is 60% of available RAM memory. Useful for PC's with a small amount of memory. Example: ramsize=40% rootcopy=/path/to_folder/with_files rootcopy=/dev/device/path/to_folder/with_files rootcopy=UUID:STrING-0F-ChARACtERS/path/to_folder/with_files rootcopy=LABEL:YourLabelName/path/to_folder/with_files ... Copy files from specified directory directly to the live filesystem. This directory will be used instead of the traditional /porteus/rootcopy. Full path is not required, although it is recommended to avoid searching through all devices. Example: 'rootcopy=/dev/sda5/porteus-files' sgnfile=some_name.sgn ... This cheatcode specifies the *.sgn file which Porteus will search for. This is Useful when you need to store several linux-live distros on one disk/disc. Example: sgnfile=porteus-usb.sgn toroot ... This parameter allows you to log directly into the GUI desktop as the root user. vmalloc=some_valueMB ... When many modules are loaded (30 or more), some kernel drivers may not be initialized correctly. Use this cheatcode to increase kernel memory allocation to fix this issue. Example: vmalloc=256MB If this is not enough, try with the 512MB option.