This is another beta version of Rescatux. The last Rescatux beta was released on October 2019. That’s about three weeks ago.
This new version checks for Gparted, Photorec and Testdisk before running them. A new option called System Info Script based on Inxi has been added. In order to improve usability a generic documentation page for non-documented options has been added. Finally bootinfoscript has been updated to use Debian’s package instead of the outdated custom embedded bootinfoscript.
This is another beta version of Rescatux. The last Rescatux beta was released on October 2019. That’s about two weeks ago.
This new version puts Gparted back into the iso and updates to Rescapp 0.54b2 which features two important usability updates: An status label will show if an options is ready to start, running or finished. And a new messages box will show every step the option is performing highlighting the most important ones in bold. No more flickering of fast status messages pop-ups as it happened in earlier versions.
Additionally the user is driven first to click into the options to read their manuals and to read the manuals carefully before clicking the Run! button.
This is another beta version of Rescatux. The last Rescatux beta was released on May 2019. That’s about five months ago.
This new version features two important fixes: Now Grub recovery in tmpfs enabled distributions such as Ubuntu will work again. Some uefi systems with secure boot disabled that happened to crashed Rescapp no longer crash it.
Additionally Rescapp menu has been reworked. Finally Rescatux live cd uefi boot menu and bios boot menu have been reworked.
Added xterm package so that external programs can be opened from within rescapp
Move testdisk package dependency from Rescapp to Rescatux
New background and associated boot menues improved
Based on Debian Buster which now it’s officially stable
What’s new on Rescapp
Rescatux 0.72-beta1 featuring Rescapp 0.54b1
Added Xterm self test
There’s no longer a back button. Improved menu.
Fixed: Non secure boot UEFI mode make rescapp to crash before its menu.
Do not mount neither the root partition nor the tmp partition when performing chroot grub operations. That reenables being able to fix Ubuntu grub properly.
Rescapp was ported from python2 to python3
Improved compatibility with Fedora (Big thanks to cjg67)
Removed gddrescue and myrescue dependencies
Move testdisk package dependency from Rescapp to Rescatux
Move gparted package dependency from Rescapp to Rescatux
Last stable Rescatux was in 2012. That’s about 7 years ago.
You know what? I’m a bit upset about many of the Rescatux users.
The main reason is the lack of feedback when things go wrong.
If Rescatux doesn’t do its job then they switch to another tool to recover their boot or gain access back to their system. Nothing but getting back to their computer matters to them.
If we release beta versions of Rescatux is to gain useful feedback to improve the distro for mankind. Rescatux developers (mostly one person at the moment) do not own every machine/computer/hardware out there to test Rescatux isos in all of them.
And they neither have the time to test all of the ways that Rescatux can be boot. Final users have the time because they are using Rescatux anyways.
My last rant about Rescatux users is about them not reporting Rescapp not working ok on Rescatux 0.71-beta7 version when booted in non secure-boot uefi mode. Rescatux is no longer useful in that mode because you never get to experience the full toolkit that Rescapp brings to you in an easy manner.
The average Rescatux user deserves another 7 years of beta-testing.
For the rest of you (you know who you are) thank you for your useful issue reports. Hopefully we can work as a team together and give birth to a new stable Rescatux version soon.
If you have some special hardware in your computer/laptop which doesn’t behave correctly with free-as-freedom drivers you might experience problems like:
Not getting a graphical desktop but a blank screen.
Getting unusable video resolutions.
Wifi not working.
In that case you might want to download a non-free version of Rescatux.
Super GRUB2 Disk is a live cd that helps you to boot into most any Operating System (OS) even if you cannot boot into it by normal means.
A new beta release
This new release features a new usb based image which lets you carry your loopback.cfg enabled distros in a second partition. Power users will be glad to learn that you can edit any Super Grub2 Disk file and make bigger the ISOs partition. Filenaming scheme for released files was improved. Finally Korean translation was added.
Super Grub2 Disk 2.02s5 – Detect and show boot methods in actionChinese Super Grub2 Disk main menuChinese Super Grub2 Disk – Detect all Operating SystemsFinnish Super Grub2 Disk main menuFinnish Super Grub2 Disk – Detect all Operating Systems
We are going to see which are the complete Super Grub2 Disk features with a demo video, where you can download it, the thank you – hall of fame and some thoughts about the Super Grub2 Disk development.
Please do not forget to read our howtos so that you can have step by step guides (how to make a cdrom or an usb, how to boot from it, etc) on how to use Super Grub2 Disk and, if needed, Rescatux.
Super Grub2 Disk 2.02s3 main menu
Tour
Here there is a little video tour in order to discover most of Super Grub2 Disk options. The rest of the options you will have to discover them by yourself.
Features
Most of the features here will let you boot into your Operating Systems. The rest of the options will improve the Super Grub2 Disk operating systems autodetecting (enable RAID, LVM, etc.) or will deal with minor aspects of the user interface (Colours, language, etc.).
Change the language UI
Translated into several languages
Spanish / Español
German / Deutsch
French / Français
Italian / Italiano
Malay / Bahasa Melayu
Russian
Finnish / Suomi
Chinese
Super Grub2 Disk 2.01 rc2 Spanish Main Menu
Detect and show boot methods option to detect most Operating Systems
Super Grub2 Disk 2.01 beta 3 – Everything menu making use of grub.cfg extract entries option functionality
Enable all native disk drivers *experimental* to detect most Operating Systems also in special devices or filesystems
Boot manually
Operating Systems
grub.cfg – Extract entries
Super Grub2 Disk 2.01 beta 3 grub.cfg Extract entries option
grub.cfg – (GRUB2 configuration files)
menu.lst – (GRUB legacy configuration files)
core.img – (GRUB2 installation (even if mbr is overwritten))
Disks and Partitions (Chainload)
Bootable ISOs (in /boot-isos or /boot/boot-isos
Extra GRUB2 functionality
Enable GRUB2’s LVM support
Enable GRUB2’s RAID support
Enable GRUB2’s PATA support (to work around BIOS bugs/limitation)
Mount encrypted volumes (LUKS and geli)
Enable serial terminal
Extra Search functionality
Search in floppy ON/OFF
Search in CDROM ON/OFF
List Devices / Partitions
Color ON /OFF
Exit
Halt the computer
Reboot the computer
Supported Operating Systems
Excluding too custom kernels from university students Super Grub2 Disk can autodetect and boot most every Operating System. Some examples are written here so that Google bots can see it and also to make more confident the final user who searchs his own special (according to him) Operating System.
Windows
Windows 10
Windows Vista/7/8/8.1
Windows NT/2000/XP
Windows 98/ME
MS-DOS
FreeDOS
GNU/Linux
Direct Kernel with autodetected initrd
Super Grub2 Disk – Detect any Operating System – Linux kernels detected
vmlinuz-*
linux-*
kernel-genkernel-*
Debian / Ubuntu / Mint
Mageia
Fedora / CentOS / Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
openSUSE / SuSE Linux Enterpsise Server (SLES)
Arch
Any many, many, more.
FreeBSD
FreeBSD (single)
FreeBSD (verbose)
FreeBSD (no ACPI)
FreeBSD (safe mode)
FreeBSD (Default boot loader)
EFI files
Mac OS X/Darwin 32bit or 64bit
Super Grub2 Disk 2.00s2 rc4 Mac OS X entries (Image credit to: Smx)
Support for different hardware platforms
Before this release we only had the hybrid version aimed at regular pcs. Now with the upcoming new EFI based machines you have the EFI standalone versions among others. What we don’t support is booting when secure boot is enabled.
Most any PC thanks to hybrid version (i386, x86_64, i386-efi, x86_64-efi) (ISO)
EFI x86_64 standalone version (EFI)
EFI i386 standalone version (EFI)
Additional Floppy, CD and USB in one download (ISO)
i386-pc
i386-efi
x86_64-efi
Known bugs
Non English translations are not completed
Supported Media
Compact Disk – Read Only Memory (CD-ROM) / DVD
Universal Serial Bus (USB) devices
Floppy (1.98s1 version only)
Downloads
Super Grub2 Disk 2.01 rc2 Main Menu
NOTE: The hybrid version should work in most any machine you might have. Please download that version.
Non scientific machine names
Description
Oldie x86
These are very old machines that only have 32-bit processors. Their supported architecture for boot is i386.
Oldie 64bit
These are old machines, usually from 2010 year or before. They have 64-bit processors. Their supported architectures for boot are: i386 and x86_64.
UEFI 64bit
These are new machines, usually from 2011 year or after. They have 64-bit processors. Their supported architecture for boot is: x86_64-efi. If you enable CSM (also known as legacy boot) support on them they also support i386 and x86_64.
UEFI 32bit
These are new machines, usually from 2011 year or after. They are very rare. They have either 64-bit processors or 32-bit processors but somehow boot initially in 32-bit mode. Their supported architecture for boot is: i386-efi. I highly doubt you can enable CSM support on these machines.
NOTE: The hybrid version should work in most any machine you might have. Please download that version.
Recommended. Modern UEFI 64-bit and 32-bit systems and also old BIOS systems. Includes additional BOOTISOS so that you can carry your loopback.cfg enabled distributions with you.
Every binary and source code inside a torrent file. For offline people.
About other downloads. These other downloads might be built in the future if anyone complains and helps enough on our mailing list: coreboot, ieee1275, standalone coreboot and standalone ieee1275.
Hashes
In order to check the former downloads you can either check the download directory page for this release
or you can check checksums right here:
USB hard disk now has an additional partition for ISO files.
supergrub-mkusb: New script for normal (non secure boot) usb creation
New filename standard * ${SUPER_GRUB2_DISK_FILE_PREFIX}-${sgrub_version}-${TARGET_PLATFORM}-${TARGET_DEVICE}.iso * Now we specify not only the media where SG2D is supposed to be put (TARGET_DEVICE) but also the architectures which should be boot on (TARGET_PLATFORM). * Makes all of the filenames consistent * Devices are in capital letters like in Debian disks * Old ‘hybrid’ names are now renamed into ‘CD’ so that usb only users choose the ‘USB’ multiarch one. * Filenames are now separated by “-” and no longer by “_” in order to meet other distros filenaming schemes * super_grub2_disk prefix now it’s just: supergrub2: ** That makes super grub2 disk filenames shorter ** It removes confusion because ‘disk’ might imply a cdrom
Zip USB based images
Changes since 2.02s10 version:
Use grub-2.04 upstream grub2 tag
Changes since 2.02s9 version:
‘Enable all native disk drivers’ option was improved. It no longer crashes.
Now devices are cached and Super Grub2 Disk is faster
Modify sg2d_directory and sg2d_dev_name variables so that SG2D is more portable
Standalone images are no longer broken and show main menu
Changes since 2.02s8 version:
(Devel) supergrub-release-news helps release team to generate a template for its news. Initial implementation.
(Devel) Added supergrub-release-changes to help with the release team.
(Devel) INSTALL: Improved explanation about what release scripts and file outputs.
Rename ‘(GRUB2 installation (even if mbr is overwritten))’ to: ‘(GRUB2 installation)’
Use grub-2.02 upstream grub2 tag (Stable version)
Added Chinese (zh-cn) translation
Added Finnish translation (Thanks to tavallinenvirtanen7)
Changes since 2.02s7 version:
Use grub-2.02-rc2 upstream grub2 tag
Default theme starfield is no longer included. This will make images smaller.
(Devel) Make sure normal isos and standalone images have hash files without its full path.
(Devel) File hashes generation has been rewritten to work from the single supergrub-mkcommon generate_filename_hashes function
(Devel) Now MD5SUMS, SHA1SUMS and SHA256SUMS files are generated as part of the official build.
Changes since 2.02s6 version:
Updated grub 2.02 build to tag: 2.02~rc1
Changes since 2.02s5 version:
Added Russian language
Improved Arch Linux initramfs detection
Added i386-efi build support
Added i386-efi to the hybrid iso
Grub itself is translated when a language is selected
(Devel) Added grub-build-004-make-check so that we ensure the build works
(Devel) Make sure linguas.sh is built when running ‘grub-build-002-clean-and-update’
(Devel) Updated upstream Super Grub2 Disk repo on documentation
(Devel) Move core supergrub menu under menus/sgd
(Devel) Use sg2d_directory as the base super grub2 disk directory variable
(Devel) New supergrub-sourcecode script that creates current git branch source code tar.gz
(Devel) New supergrub-all-zip-file script: Makes sure a zip file of everything is built.
(Devel) supergrub-meta-mkrescue: Build everything into releases directory in order to make source code more clean.
(Devel) New supergrub-official-release script: Build main files, source code and everything zip file from a single script in order to ease official Super Grub 2 Disk releases.
Changes since 2.02s4 version:
Stop trying to chainload devices under UEFI and improve the help people get in the case of a platform mismatch
(Devel) Properly support source based built grub-mkfont binary.
New options were added to chainload directly either /ntldr or /bootmgr thanks to ntldr command. They only work in BIOS mode.
Changes since 2.02s3 version:
Using upstream grub-2.02-beta3 tag as the new base for Super Grub2 Disk’s grub.
Major improvement in Windows OS detection (based on BCD) Windows Vista, 7, …
Major improvement in Windows OS detection (based on ntldr) Windows XP, 2000, …
Changes since 2.02s2 beta 1 version:
(Devel) grub-mkstandalone was deleted because we no longer use it
Updated (and added) Copyright notices for 2015
New option: ‘Disks and Partitions (Chainload)’ adapted from Smx work
Many files were rewritten so that they only loop between devices that actually need to be searched into. This enhacement will make Super Grub2 Disk faster.
Remove Super Grub2 Disk own devices from search by default. Added an option to be able to enable/disable the Super Grub2 Disk own devices search.
2.02s2 beta 1 changelog:
Updated grub 2.02 build to commit: 8e5bc2f4d3767485e729ed96ea943570d1cb1e45
Updated documentation for building Super Grub2 Disk
Improvement on upstream grub (d29259b134257458a98c1ddc05d2a36c677ded37 – test: do not stop after first file test or closing bracket) will probably make Super Grub2 Disk run faster.
Added new grub build scripts so that Super Grub2 Disk uses its own built versions of grub and not the default system / distro / chroot one.
Ensure that Mac OS X entries are detected ok thanks to Users dir. This is because Grub2 needs to emulate Mac OS X kernel so that it’s detected as a proper boot device on Apple computers.
Thanks to upstream grub improvement now Super Grub2 Disk supports booting in EFI mode when booted from a USB device / hard disk. Actually SG2D was announced previously to boot from EFI from a USB device while it only booted from a cdrom.
2.02s1 beta 1 changelog:
Added new option: “Enable all native disk drivers” so that you can try to load: SATA, PATA and USB hard disks (and their partitions) as native disk drives. This is experimental.
Removed no longer needed options: “Enable USB” and “Enable PATA”.
“Search floppy” and “Search cdrom” options were moved into “Extra GRUB2 functionality menu”. At the same time “Extra Search functionality” menu was removed.
Added new straight-forward option: “Enable GRUB2’s RAID and LVM support”.
“List devices/partitions” was renamed to “Print devices/partitions”.
“Everything” option was renamed to “Detect and show boot methods”.
“Everything +” option was removed to avoid confusions.
Other minor improvements in the source code.
Updated translation files. Now most translations are pending.
Updated INSTALL instructions.
Finally you can check all the detailed changes at our GIT commits.
If you want to translate into your language please check TRANSLATION file at source code to learn how to translate into your language.
Thank you – Hall of fame
I want to thank in alphabetical order:
The upstream Grub crew. I’m subscribed to both help-grub and grub-devel and I admire the work you do there.
Necrosporus for his insistence on making Super Grub2 Disk smaller.
And I cannot forget about thanking bTactic, the enterprise where I work at and that hosts our site.
Some thoughts about Super Grub2 Disk development
Super Grub2 Disk development ideas
I think we won’t improve Super Grub2 Disk too much. We will try to stick to official Grub2 stable releases. Unless a new feature that it’s not included in official Grub2 stable release is needed in order to give additional useful functionalities to Super Grub2 Disk.
I have added some scripts to Super Grub2 Disk build so that writing these pieces of news is more automatic and less prone to errors. Check them out in git repo as you will not find them in 2.02s8 source code.
Old idea: I don’t know when but I plan to readapt some scripts from os-prober. That will let us detect more operating systems. Not sure when though. I mean, it’s not something that worries me because it does not affect too many final users. But, well, it’s something new that I hadn’t thought about.
Again, please send us feedback on what you think it’s missing on Super Grub2 Disk.
Rescatux development
I want to focus on Rescatux development on the next months so that we have an stable release before the end of 2017. Now I need to finish adding UEFI features (most finished), fix the scripts that generate Rescatux source code (difficult) and write much documentation.
Super GRUB2 Disk is a live cd that helps you to boot into most any Operating System (OS) even if you cannot boot into it by normal means.
A new stable release
This new release features new upstream grub 2.04. Some of the grub 2.04 features which might be or might not be reflected on the SG2D UI are:
Support for multiple early initrd images
Support for the F2FS file-system
A verifier framework
RISC-V support
UEFI Secure Boot shim support
Btrfs Zstd improvements
Btrfs RAID5/RAID6 support
Xen PVH support
UEFI TPM 1.2/2.0 support
Super Grub2 Disk 2.02s5 – Detect and show boot methods in actionChinese Super Grub2 Disk main menuChinese Super Grub2 Disk – Detect all Operating SystemsFinnish Super Grub2 Disk main menuFinnish Super Grub2 Disk – Detect all Operating Systems
We are going to see which are the complete Super Grub2 Disk features with a demo video, where you can download it, the thank you – hall of fame and some thoughts about the Super Grub2 Disk development.
Please do not forget to read our howtos so that you can have step by step guides (how to make a cdrom or an usb, how to boot from it, etc) on how to use Super Grub2 Disk and, if needed, Rescatux.
Super Grub2 Disk 2.02s3 main menu
Tour
Here there is a little video tour in order to discover most of Super Grub2 Disk options. The rest of the options you will have to discover them by yourself.
Features
Most of the features here will let you boot into your Operating Systems. The rest of the options will improve the Super Grub2 Disk operating systems autodetecting (enable RAID, LVM, etc.) or will deal with minor aspects of the user interface (Colours, language, etc.).
Change the language UI
Translated into several languages
Spanish / Español
German / Deutsch
French / Français
Italian / Italiano
Malay / Bahasa Melayu
Russian
Finnish / Suomi
Chinese
Super Grub2 Disk 2.01 rc2 Spanish Main Menu
Detect and show boot methods option to detect most Operating Systems
Super Grub2 Disk 2.01 beta 3 – Everything menu making use of grub.cfg extract entries option functionality
Enable all native disk drivers *experimental* to detect most Operating Systems also in special devices or filesystems
Boot manually
Operating Systems
grub.cfg – Extract entries
Super Grub2 Disk 2.01 beta 3 grub.cfg Extract entries option
grub.cfg – (GRUB2 configuration files)
menu.lst – (GRUB legacy configuration files)
core.img – (GRUB2 installation (even if mbr is overwritten))
Disks and Partitions (Chainload)
Bootable ISOs (in /boot-isos or /boot/boot-isos
Extra GRUB2 functionality
Enable GRUB2’s LVM support
Enable GRUB2’s RAID support
Enable GRUB2’s PATA support (to work around BIOS bugs/limitation)
Mount encrypted volumes (LUKS and geli)
Enable serial terminal
Extra Search functionality
Search in floppy ON/OFF
Search in CDROM ON/OFF
List Devices / Partitions
Color ON /OFF
Exit
Halt the computer
Reboot the computer
Supported Operating Systems
Excluding too custom kernels from university students Super Grub2 Disk can autodetect and boot most every Operating System. Some examples are written here so that Google bots can see it and also to make more confident the final user who searchs his own special (according to him) Operating System.
Windows
Windows 10
Windows Vista/7/8/8.1
Windows NT/2000/XP
Windows 98/ME
MS-DOS
FreeDOS
GNU/Linux
Direct Kernel with autodetected initrd
Super Grub2 Disk – Detect any Operating System – Linux kernels detected
vmlinuz-*
linux-*
kernel-genkernel-*
Debian / Ubuntu / Mint
Mageia
Fedora / CentOS / Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
openSUSE / SuSE Linux Enterpsise Server (SLES)
Arch
Any many, many, more.
FreeBSD
FreeBSD (single)
FreeBSD (verbose)
FreeBSD (no ACPI)
FreeBSD (safe mode)
FreeBSD (Default boot loader)
EFI files
Mac OS X/Darwin 32bit or 64bit
Super Grub2 Disk 2.00s2 rc4 Mac OS X entries (Image credit to: Smx)
Support for different hardware platforms
Before this release we only had the hybrid version aimed at regular pcs. Now with the upcoming new EFI based machines you have the EFI standalone versions among others. What we don’t support is booting when secure boot is enabled.
Most any PC thanks to hybrid version (i386, x86_64, i386-efi, x86_64-efi) (ISO)
EFI x86_64 standalone version (EFI)
EFI i386 standalone version (EFI)
Additional Floppy, CD and USB in one download (ISO)
i386-pc
i386-efi
x86_64-efi
Known bugs
Non English translations are not completed
Supported Media
Compact Disk – Read Only Memory (CD-ROM) / DVD
Universal Serial Bus (USB) devices
Floppy (1.98s1 version only)
Downloads
Super Grub2 Disk 2.01 rc2 Main Menu
NOTE: The hybrid version should work in most any machine you might have. Please download that version.
Non scientific machine names
Description
Oldie x86
These are very old machines that only have 32-bit processors. Their supported architecture for boot is i386.
Oldie 64bit
These are old machines, usually from 2010 year or before. They have 64-bit processors. Their supported architectures for boot are: i386 and x86_64.
UEFI 64bit
These are new machines, usually from 2011 year or after. They have 64-bit processors. Their supported architecture for boot is: x86_64-efi. If you enable CSM (also known as legacy boot) support on them they also support i386 and x86_64.
UEFI 32bit
These are new machines, usually from 2011 year or after. They are very rare. They have either 64-bit processors or 32-bit processors but somehow boot initially in 32-bit mode. Their supported architecture for boot is: i386-efi. I highly doubt you can enable CSM support on these machines.
NOTE: The hybrid version should work in most any machine you might have. Please download that version.
Every binary and source code inside a torrent file. For offline people.
About other downloads. These other downloads might be built in the future if anyone complains and helps enough on our mailing list: coreboot, ieee1275, standalone coreboot and standalone ieee1275.
Hashes
In order to check the former downloads you can either check the download directory page for this release
or you can check checksums right here:
(Devel) Added grub-build-004-make-check so that we ensure the build works
(Devel) Make sure linguas.sh is built when running ‘grub-build-002-clean-and-update’
(Devel) Updated upstream Super Grub2 Disk repo on documentation
(Devel) Move core supergrub menu under menus/sgd
(Devel) Use sg2d_directory as the base super grub2 disk directory variable
(Devel) New supergrub-sourcecode script that creates current git branch source code tar.gz
(Devel) New supergrub-all-zip-file script: Makes sure a zip file of everything is built.
(Devel) supergrub-meta-mkrescue: Build everything into releases directory in order to make source code more clean.
(Devel) New supergrub-official-release script: Build main files, source code and everything zip file from a single script in order to ease official Super Grub 2 Disk releases.
Changes since 2.02s4 version:
Stop trying to chainload devices under UEFI and improve the help people get in the case of a platform mismatch
(Devel) Properly support source based built grub-mkfont binary.
New options were added to chainload directly either /ntldr or /bootmgr thanks to ntldr command. They only work in BIOS mode.
Changes since 2.02s3 version:
Using upstream grub-2.02-beta3 tag as the new base for Super Grub2 Disk’s grub.
Major improvement in Windows OS detection (based on BCD) Windows Vista, 7, …
Major improvement in Windows OS detection (based on ntldr) Windows XP, 2000, …
Changes since 2.02s2 beta 1 version:
(Devel) grub-mkstandalone was deleted because we no longer use it
Updated (and added) Copyright notices for 2015
New option: ‘Disks and Partitions (Chainload)’ adapted from Smx work
Many files were rewritten so that they only loop between devices that actually need to be searched into. This enhacement will make Super Grub2 Disk faster.
Remove Super Grub2 Disk own devices from search by default. Added an option to be able to enable/disable the Super Grub2 Disk own devices search.
2.02s2 beta 1 changelog:
Updated grub 2.02 build to commit: 8e5bc2f4d3767485e729ed96ea943570d1cb1e45
Updated documentation for building Super Grub2 Disk
Improvement on upstream grub (d29259b134257458a98c1ddc05d2a36c677ded37 – test: do not stop after first file test or closing bracket) will probably make Super Grub2 Disk run faster.
Added new grub build scripts so that Super Grub2 Disk uses its own built versions of grub and not the default system / distro / chroot one.
Ensure that Mac OS X entries are detected ok thanks to Users dir. This is because Grub2 needs to emulate Mac OS X kernel so that it’s detected as a proper boot device on Apple computers.
Thanks to upstream grub improvement now Super Grub2 Disk supports booting in EFI mode when booted from a USB device / hard disk. Actually SG2D was announced previously to boot from EFI from a USB device while it only booted from a cdrom.
2.02s1 beta 1 changelog:
Added new option: “Enable all native disk drivers” so that you can try to load: SATA, PATA and USB hard disks (and their partitions) as native disk drives. This is experimental.
Removed no longer needed options: “Enable USB” and “Enable PATA”.
“Search floppy” and “Search cdrom” options were moved into “Extra GRUB2 functionality menu”. At the same time “Extra Search functionality” menu was removed.
Added new straight-forward option: “Enable GRUB2’s RAID and LVM support”.
“List devices/partitions” was renamed to “Print devices/partitions”.
“Everything” option was renamed to “Detect and show boot methods”.
“Everything +” option was removed to avoid confusions.
Other minor improvements in the source code.
Updated translation files. Now most translations are pending.
Updated INSTALL instructions.
Finally you can check all the detailed changes at our GIT commits.
If you want to translate into your language please check TRANSLATION file at source code to learn how to translate into your language.
Thank you – Hall of fame
I want to thank in alphabetical order:
The upstream Grub crew. I’m subscribed to both help-grub and grub-devel and I admire the work you do there.
Necrosporus for his insistence on making Super Grub2 Disk smaller.
And I cannot forget about thanking bTactic, the enterprise where I work at and that hosts our site.
Some thoughts about Super Grub2 Disk development
Super Grub2 Disk development ideas
I think we won’t improve Super Grub2 Disk too much. We will try to stick to official Grub2 stable releases. Unless a new feature that it’s not included in official Grub2 stable release is needed in order to give additional useful functionalities to Super Grub2 Disk.
I have added some scripts to Super Grub2 Disk build so that writing these pieces of news is more automatic and less prone to errors. Check them out in git repo as you will not find them in 2.02s8 source code.
Old idea: I don’t know when but I plan to readapt some scripts from os-prober. That will let us detect more operating systems. Not sure when though. I mean, it’s not something that worries me because it does not affect too many final users. But, well, it’s something new that I hadn’t thought about.
Again, please send us feedback on what you think it’s missing on Super Grub2 Disk.
Rescatux development
I want to focus on Rescatux development on the next months so that we have an stable release before the end of 2017. Now I need to finish adding UEFI features (most finished), fix the scripts that generate Rescatux source code (difficult) and write much documentation.
This last week I have been unable to sleep. Why? My friend adrian15 told me about him releasing another beta version of Rescatux. The last Rescatux beta was released on December 2017. That’s more than a year ago.
He has been hyping me about all those new features that this iso is going to have for the past two months. And he has also bothered me with all the problems he had been finding along the way. He is very persistent because he has finally managed to work around most of them.
So, the first thing I want to point out is that Rescatux, as you might know is usually based on Debian stable. Well, Rescatux 0.51b3 was based on Debian Jessie 8 and Rescatux 0.71 beta is based on Debian Buster 10 which happens not to be a Debian stable because it has not been released yet.
Debian Buster 10 will be release as stable Debian in the next months
But Debian Buster is frozen and it will be released as Debian stable in less than a year.
Using Debian Buster 10 instead of Debian Jessie 8 as a base means that more recent hardware will be supported out of the box. And that’s great because I recently bought a HP250 G6 2SX60EA laptop and I want to test Rescatux on it. So that I can give adrian15 more work Ha Ha Ha !
The other nice about this iso is the many ways it can be booted. Super Grub2 Disk which has an hybrid boot that supports i386-pc, ia32-efi and amd64-efi boots is from the same author. So you should not an expect an amd64 only disk and an i386 only disk but an hybrid one.
And that’s what you get. Here there is a boot options summary table:
Secure Boot
BIOS/EFI platform
Kernel Arch
Boot?
On
x64 EFI
amd64
Yes
On
x64 EFI
i386
Seems not to work
On
ia32 EFI
amd64
Non tested
On
ia32 EFI
i386
Non tested
Secure Boot
BIOS/EFI platform
Kernel Arch
Boot?
Off
x64 EFI
amd64
Yes
Off
x64 EFI
i386
Yes
Off
ia32 EFI
amd64
Non tested
Off
ia32 EFI
i386
Non tested
Secure Boot
BIOS/EFI platform
Kernel Arch
Boot?
Off
BIOS
amd64
Yes
Off
BIOS
i386
Yes
Have you noticed it? Yeah, that’s it. Now Rescatux 0.71 beta 7 gets Secure Boot support from Debian Buster. And it’s Secure Boot which works with Microsoft Secure Boot enabled machines. So we are not going to need to tweak our UEFI firmware to be able to boot Rescatux. Yay!
What more about boot? Yes, there is this liveid thing that adrian15 made up so that some hp laptops that come with live-build installations do not confuse Rescatux boot. That’s supposed to be a new standard for live cds but according to what he has told me not many distros are willing to adopt it.
It’s UUID for live cds he has told me. It should be make easier the work of Yumi, Rufus, Easy2Boot and similar tools if combined with loopback.cfg according to him. Go figure.
Hands on – Boot
Enough talking.
Let’s boot the iso and see what we get at.
I’m getting an isolinux menu with a countdown when booted in BIOS mode. Look at that! The poor tux penguin has beta 7 all of over his face! XD XD XD . This needs to be fixed in the next stable release. #FreeTuxFromBeta7
Rescatux BIOS boot menu #FreeTuxFromBeta7
However when I boot in UEFI mode I am not getting a countdown and the default boot entry cannot be seen because it’s white and the background is also white. I remember seeing this same problem in Rescatux 0.51b3. This has not been definitively been fixed.
Rescatux UEFI boot menu
Rescatux Desktop
What about having a laptop with a semi broken screen? I had to install open-vm-tools-desktop package on my virtualbox instance but I finally managed to make it work with two screens. That way I can show it to you without using a blurry mobile phone photo 😉 .
Guess what?
Rescatux gets you covered because you can start the monitor settings when monitors are horizontally stretched. The dialogs concerning monitor settings are centered among the two monitors.
So that means that I can finally recover my old broken screen laptop. I just disable my laptop screen and leave enabled the external screen. And there’s no need for me to learn hotkeys and commands to run those screen setup screens manually.
Rescatux Startup Wizard centered between two screensChange Monitor Settings centered between two screens
By the way this monitor settings dialog is a part of the new Rescatux startup wizard.
Rescapp was already a wizard for your rescue tasks but adrian15 managed to add this new wizard for the live cd itself. These new Rescatux startup wizard feature are quite neat so that you can customize your Rescatux session.
Change monitor settings
Change language/locale
Change keyboard layout
Turn off VNC Server or change its password
VNC Server. That is an interesting feature for youtubers and maybe cloud users.
Now Rescatux starts up a VNC server at startup so that you can access it from the network. I have asked adrian15 on how to setup an static ip from boot parametres as I had seen in the past in GRML but he has told me it is not implemented yet. ‘You have to rely on dhcp or setup the static ip manually.’ he has told me. Look at this, we are ready to run Rescapp. Finally! This was getting bored because Rescapp is what matters in this distro.
Is this Rescapp?
What do we have here? This is Rescapp. But this is not the Rescapp that I know of with all those options. Let’s read the windows title:
Rescapp Self-Test
Rescapp checks itself thanks to self-test new functionality
I first thought this screen was meant for people to know if they had boot in Secure Boot or in UEFI mode. That’s useful because when playing with UEFI and BIOS boot I have learnt that every OS in the computer needs to be either boot in UEFI mode or in BIOS mode. Not the two of them mixed.
Later on, while discussing with adrian15 about this option he has told me about him converting rescapp and chntpw (what makes possible to reset Microsoft Windows passwords) into proper Debian packages. As Rescapp is available as an upstream package or as a Debian package it might appear in other distros without being able to show its full potential.
So now when a distro lacks SELinux support you know. If the distro has not packaged the forked version of chntpw that Rescapp uses then you also know. But you are not forbidden of using Rescapp. Maybe SeLinux support (needed by RHEL, Fedora, Centos,…) is not used by your usual distro so it does not affect you.
So Self-test not only helps you to diagnose if you have boot in the proper mode (UEFI or BIOS) but also if your live cd is lacking some of the Rescapp requirements.
After you click on the Start Rescapp !!! button you finally get out beloved Rescapp.
Our beloved Rescapp UI
Rescapp not so updated and angry call
I took a depth look into Rescapp for about long thirty minutes but I didn’t see anything relevant. This was confusing. I was expecting some Secure Boot options now that Rescatux could boot from Secure Boot machines. I was expecting him to fullfill all of the options embeded html documentation that I had complained to him when he released 0.51b3 version and I had to dig inside his rescapp scripts to understand them.
I had to phone adrian15.
He laughed at me. He was expecting my call. Too much work on putting up Rescatux up to date and adding all of those fancy wizards was his explanation. When I was going to complain to him about the awful design of the beta7 text in front of the now sad penguin he told me: Pull requests are welcome and he hung up the phone on me!
Super GRUB2 Disk is a live cd that helps you to boot into most any Operating System (OS) even if you cannot boot into it by normal means.
A new beta release
This new releases features new upstream grub 2.04rc1 which includes
Support for multiple early initrd images
Support for the F2FS file-system
A verifier framework
RISC-V support
UEFI Secure Boot shim support
Btrfs Zstd improvements
Btrfs RAID5/RAID6 support
Xen PVH support
UEFI TPM 1.2/2.0 support
Super Grub2 Disk 2.02s5 – Detect and show boot methods in actionChinese Super Grub2 Disk main menuChinese Super Grub2 Disk – Detect all Operating SystemsFinnish Super Grub2 Disk main menuFinnish Super Grub2 Disk – Detect all Operating Systems
We are going to see which are the complete Super Grub2 Disk features with a demo video, where you can download it, the thank you – hall of fame and some thoughts about the Super Grub2 Disk development.
Please do not forget to read our howtos so that you can have step by step guides (how to make a cdrom or an usb, how to boot from it, etc) on how to use Super Grub2 Disk and, if needed, Rescatux.
Super Grub2 Disk 2.02s3 main menu
Tour
Here there is a little video tour in order to discover most of Super Grub2 Disk options. The rest of the options you will have to discover them by yourself.
Features
Most of the features here will let you boot into your Operating Systems. The rest of the options will improve the Super Grub2 Disk operating systems autodetecting (enable RAID, LVM, etc.) or will deal with minor aspects of the user interface (Colours, language, etc.).
Change the language UI
Translated into several languages
Spanish / Español
German / Deutsch
French / Français
Italian / Italiano
Malay / Bahasa Melayu
Russian
Finnish / Suomi
Chinese
Super Grub2 Disk 2.01 rc2 Spanish Main Menu
Detect and show boot methods option to detect most Operating Systems
Super Grub2 Disk 2.01 beta 3 – Everything menu making use of grub.cfg extract entries option functionality
Enable all native disk drivers *experimental* to detect most Operating Systems also in special devices or filesystems
Boot manually
Operating Systems
grub.cfg – Extract entries
Super Grub2 Disk 2.01 beta 3 grub.cfg Extract entries option
grub.cfg – (GRUB2 configuration files)
menu.lst – (GRUB legacy configuration files)
core.img – (GRUB2 installation (even if mbr is overwritten))
Disks and Partitions (Chainload)
Bootable ISOs (in /boot-isos or /boot/boot-isos
Extra GRUB2 functionality
Enable GRUB2’s LVM support
Enable GRUB2’s RAID support
Enable GRUB2’s PATA support (to work around BIOS bugs/limitation)
Mount encrypted volumes (LUKS and geli)
Enable serial terminal
Extra Search functionality
Search in floppy ON/OFF
Search in CDROM ON/OFF
List Devices / Partitions
Color ON /OFF
Exit
Halt the computer
Reboot the computer
Supported Operating Systems
Excluding too custom kernels from university students Super Grub2 Disk can autodetect and boot most every Operating System. Some examples are written here so that Google bots can see it and also to make more confident the final user who searchs his own special (according to him) Operating System.
Windows
Windows 10
Windows Vista/7/8/8.1
Windows NT/2000/XP
Windows 98/ME
MS-DOS
FreeDOS
GNU/Linux
Direct Kernel with autodetected initrd
Super Grub2 Disk – Detect any Operating System – Linux kernels detected
vmlinuz-*
linux-*
kernel-genkernel-*
Debian / Ubuntu / Mint
Mageia
Fedora / CentOS / Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
openSUSE / SuSE Linux Enterpsise Server (SLES)
Arch
Any many, many, more.
FreeBSD
FreeBSD (single)
FreeBSD (verbose)
FreeBSD (no ACPI)
FreeBSD (safe mode)
FreeBSD (Default boot loader)
EFI files
Mac OS X/Darwin 32bit or 64bit
Super Grub2 Disk 2.00s2 rc4 Mac OS X entries (Image credit to: Smx)
Support for different hardware platforms
Before this release we only had the hybrid version aimed at regular pcs. Now with the upcoming new EFI based machines you have the EFI standalone versions among others. What we don’t support is booting when secure boot is enabled.
Most any PC thanks to hybrid version (i386, x86_64, i386-efi, x86_64-efi) (ISO)
EFI x86_64 standalone version (EFI)
EFI i386 standalone version (EFI)
Additional Floppy, CD and USB in one download (ISO)
i386-pc
i386-efi
x86_64-efi
Known bugs
Non English translations are not completed
Supported Media
Compact Disk – Read Only Memory (CD-ROM) / DVD
Universal Serial Bus (USB) devices
Floppy (1.98s1 version only)
Downloads
Recommended download (Floppy, CD & USB in one) (Valid for i386, x86_64, i386-efi and x86_64-efi):
About other downloads. As this is the first time I develop Super Grub2 Disk out of source code (well, probably not the first time, but the first time in ages) I have not been able to build these other downloads: coreboot, i386-efi, i386-pc, ieee1275, x86_64-efi, standalone coreboot, standalone i386-efi, standalone ieee1275. bfree has helped on this matter and with his help we might have those builds in next releases. If you want such builds drop a mail in the mailing list so that we aware of that need.
(Devel) Added grub-build-004-make-check so that we ensure the build works
(Devel) Make sure linguas.sh is built when running ‘grub-build-002-clean-and-update’
(Devel) Updated upstream Super Grub2 Disk repo on documentation
(Devel) Move core supergrub menu under menus/sgd
(Devel) Use sg2d_directory as the base super grub2 disk directory variable
(Devel) New supergrub-sourcecode script that creates current git branch source code tar.gz
(Devel) New supergrub-all-zip-file script: Makes sure a zip file of everything is built.
(Devel) supergrub-meta-mkrescue: Build everything into releases directory in order to make source code more clean.
(Devel) New supergrub-official-release script: Build main files, source code and everything zip file from a single script in order to ease official Super Grub 2 Disk releases.
Changes since 2.02s4 version:
Stop trying to chainload devices under UEFI and improve the help people get in the case of a platform mismatch
(Devel) Properly support source based built grub-mkfont binary.
New options were added to chainload directly either /ntldr or /bootmgr thanks to ntldr command. They only work in BIOS mode.
Changes since 2.02s3 version:
Using upstream grub-2.02-beta3 tag as the new base for Super Grub2 Disk’s grub.
Major improvement in Windows OS detection (based on BCD) Windows Vista, 7, …
Major improvement in Windows OS detection (based on ntldr) Windows XP, 2000, …
Changes since 2.02s2 beta 1 version:
(Devel) grub-mkstandalone was deleted because we no longer use it
Updated (and added) Copyright notices for 2015
New option: ‘Disks and Partitions (Chainload)’ adapted from Smx work
Many files were rewritten so that they only loop between devices that actually need to be searched into. This enhacement will make Super Grub2 Disk faster.
Remove Super Grub2 Disk own devices from search by default. Added an option to be able to enable/disable the Super Grub2 Disk own devices search.
2.02s2 beta 1 changelog:
Updated grub 2.02 build to commit: 8e5bc2f4d3767485e729ed96ea943570d1cb1e45
Updated documentation for building Super Grub2 Disk
Improvement on upstream grub (d29259b134257458a98c1ddc05d2a36c677ded37 – test: do not stop after first file test or closing bracket) will probably make Super Grub2 Disk run faster.
Added new grub build scripts so that Super Grub2 Disk uses its own built versions of grub and not the default system / distro / chroot one.
Ensure that Mac OS X entries are detected ok thanks to Users dir. This is because Grub2 needs to emulate Mac OS X kernel so that it’s detected as a proper boot device on Apple computers.
Thanks to upstream grub improvement now Super Grub2 Disk supports booting in EFI mode when booted from a USB device / hard disk. Actually SG2D was announced previously to boot from EFI from a USB device while it only booted from a cdrom.
2.02s1 beta 1 changelog:
Added new option: “Enable all native disk drivers” so that you can try to load: SATA, PATA and USB hard disks (and their partitions) as native disk drives. This is experimental.
Removed no longer needed options: “Enable USB” and “Enable PATA”.
“Search floppy” and “Search cdrom” options were moved into “Extra GRUB2 functionality menu”. At the same time “Extra Search functionality” menu was removed.
Added new straight-forward option: “Enable GRUB2’s RAID and LVM support”.
“List devices/partitions” was renamed to “Print devices/partitions”.
“Everything” option was renamed to “Detect and show boot methods”.
“Everything +” option was removed to avoid confusions.
Other minor improvements in the source code.
Updated translation files. Now most translations are pending.
Updated INSTALL instructions.
Finally you can check all the detailed changes at our GIT commits.
If you want to translate into your language please check TRANSLATION file at source code to learn how to translate into your language.
Thank you – Hall of fame
I want to thank in alphabetical order:
The upstream Grub crew. I’m subscribed to both help-grub and grub-devel and I admire the work you do there.
Necrosporus for his insistence on making Super Grub2 Disk smaller.
And I cannot forget about thanking bTactic, the enterprise where I work at and that hosts our site.
Some thoughts about Super Grub2 Disk development
Super Grub2 Disk development ideas
I think we won’t improve Super Grub2 Disk too much. We will try to stick to official Grub2 stable releases. Unless a new feature that it’s not included in official Grub2 stable release is needed in order to give additional useful functionalities to Super Grub2 Disk.
I have added some scripts to Super Grub2 Disk build so that writing these pieces of news is more automatic and less prone to errors. Check them out in git repo as you will not find them in 2.02s8 source code.
Old idea: I don’t know when but I plan to readapt some scripts from os-prober. That will let us detect more operating systems. Not sure when though. I mean, it’s not something that worries me because it does not affect too many final users. But, well, it’s something new that I hadn’t thought about.
Again, please send us feedback on what you think it’s missing on Super Grub2 Disk.
Rescatux development
I want to focus on Rescatux development on the next months so that we have an stable release before the end of 2017. Now I need to finish adding UEFI features (most finished), fix the scripts that generate Rescatux source code (difficult) and write much documentation.
While we wait for Rescatux to be rewritten, once again, so that it’s based on Debian 10 (Buster) its main program: Rescapp needs some love. Some testing. Some polishment.
So if you want to help Rescatux / Rescapp development and you happen to have either a:
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