Ventoy boots to menu but on selecting ShredOS .img file on a legacy only system you end up at the grub prompt. Works on UEFI & .iso

[juncture6825]

Hello! Every time I attempt to use the 0.34 shredos .iso file on the latest version of Ventoy, I get kernel errors on boot. And every time I try to use the latest shredOS .img file on Ventoy, it drops me into the Grub command line; it doesn't even boot. I have tried Ventoy with Secureboot enabled and disabled, and Ventoy on GPT and MBR. The same error still occurs. The .img file will drop me into the Grub cli, and the .iso will have kernel errors on boot, which causes it to freeze and never boot. I've tried this on multiple different USB sticks, one 64GB and another 128GB one. The same error happens on different USB sticks. I have also tried different computers to boot it on; the same errors appear on all computers. I've also tried older versions of both ventory and shredos. No luck.

ShredOS is advertised on both the Ventoy and ShredOS repo to be compatible with each other. I couldn't find anyone else having the same issue as me.

This is what happens when using the latest ShredOS img file on Ventoy:

This is what happens when using 0.34 ShredOS iso file Ventory:

[PartialVolume]

What other .isos have you got on the same USB stick, are any Linux, like gparted and do they all boot ok?

[PartialVolume]

Is this the same system that had those awful USB load speeds of 620KiB/s?

[Binary-Bear]

gparted and memtest both boot ok using Ventoy/Yumi

Yes same system booting at 620KiB/s

[PartialVolume]

You know gparted includes nwipe. I don't know whether it's the latest version of nwipe, i.e v0.35 but may be worth checking which version they include.

As for what is causing the uncompression error, all I can think of is the USB bus. How fast does gparted take to boot up of the same USB stick?

[Binary-Bear]

How fast does gparted take to boot up of the same USB stick?

I think gparted loads faster. I will test again.

[PartialVolume]

I've added the grub notes to the MSI legacy motherboard details in regards to what you need to do if you end up at the grub prompt. See the USB boot speed charts #209

[Binary-Bear]

gparted boots at about 19.2MB/s

shredos remains at about 620KiB/s

Both using exactly the same hardware.

[PartialVolume]

How do you determine it boots at 19.2MB/s?

[Binary-Bear]

It is part of the gparted boot screen output.

[PartialVolume]

It is part of the gparted boot screen output.

That's odd, I've got both gparted-live-1.1.0-8-i686.iso and gparted-live-1.5.0-6-amd64.iso on my Ventoy flash drive and when I boot either I don't get any mention of boot speed. Takes about 40 seconds after the initial selection screen where you select gparted live. Are you running a different version?

[Binary-Bear]

I am using gparted-live-1.5.0-6-amd64.iso.

When you boot to the first options screen choose the second option.

Gparted Live (Default settings & to RAM)

The install speed will then be displayed.

[PartialVolume]

Thanks, got it. I'm getting about 35MB/s on this old 2007 MSI board.

I don't think comparing ShredOS & gparted is a fair comparison as their boot methods are completely different. Here's my reasoning:

When ShredOS loads the kernel it's not using any Linux kernel drivers as such as obviously the kernel has not booted yet, grub is using it's own drivers. The first and only file being loaded by grub is shredos and it's relatively big at 218MByte. Gparted follows the two stage boot where you have vmlinuz and initrd.img. I believe the first stage is only the kernel & drivers and nothing else so the file is quite small, maybe a tenth of the size of the ShredOS file. gparted then uses the kernel drivers and not grub drivers to load the filesystem and required files.

So the slowness in speed may be because there is an issue with the grub driver or maybe that's the way it is with your hardware but with gparted it's not apparent because the first stage is ten times smaller. The second stage is loaded by the kernel drivers.

If this is the case, then if ShredOS gets any larger I might have to look at have a two stage boot so the initial stage drops below 10MB. Maybe it has nothing to do with the grub drivers, maybe it's the speed of the bios. The shredos kernel file has grown to such as size due to the DRM graphics drivers, they now take up over 100MB out of the 218MB. They are necessary however for various reasons to do with APIC and unfreezing drives for running secure erase.

Anyway, that doesn't explain the un-compression error that occurs, so maybe there is a very subtle bug on your hardware. We really could do with an identical motherboard to see if they both behaved exactly the same. Other than that I'm pretty much out of ideas. Other than write ShredOS to a SATA drive. Now that should load really fast ! :-)

[Binary-Bear]

We really could do with an identical motherboard to see if they both behaved exactly the same.

LOL It just so happens that I have two of these computers :)

Both have the same issues.

The two stage boot sounds interesting and would be a huge upgrade to shredos.

[juncture6825]

If it helps, one of the computers ive tested it on has an ASUS motherboard, and the other is an ASUS laptop. These are all modern systems.

Hopefully a solution will be available soon so I can use Ventoy with ShredOS.

[Binary-Bear]

Hi PartialVolume

I wonder if this might help you find out what is going wrong with Ventoy and shredos?

[Binary-Bear]

Something else which might help explain the troubles with Ventoy. Link

[juncture6825]

@PartialVolume shredos.x86_64-2023.08.2_25.0_x86-64_0.35_nomodeset.iso works in Ventoy in both normal grub and grub2 mode. Thanks!