Rescatux 0.32b3 tutorial

So this is the official Rescatux tutorial based on the latest 0.32 beta 3 Rescatux. Please enjoy the full show or select the section that matches your need.

If you are more interested on what Rescatux can do instead of how you are supposed to use it please check Summary .

If you want to make use of the Recover Windows boot option ( Restore Windows MBR (Beta) ) make sure to use Rescatux 0.32 beta 2 or a newest version else you might get your Windows 7 unbootable even if you use the latest stable 0.30.2 version.

My English is not perfect and I will try to improve it for the next videos.

Super Grub2 Disk 2.00s2 Tour Video

I have recorded another video of Super Grub2 Disk Tour. It is now based on 2.00s2 version. The video is much better than the latest one (which I have just removed) because my English is better and because I had an script with what I needed to say. More than this I speak slowly for non English speakers.

Anyways my English in this video is far from optimal if you are a native English. Nobody has offered himself to record it so… I can’t do any better ;).

Enjoy !!!

 

Rescatux 0.32 beta 3 released

Download, News, Rescatux, Rescatux, Rescatux Beta

Rescatux 0.32 beta 3 has been released.

New Languages selection at Rescatux 0.32 beta 3 greeter
New Languages selection at Rescatux 0.32 beta 3 greeter

Downloads:

Rescatux 0.32b3 size is about 469 Megabytes.

LXDE start menu in Spanish thanks to Rescatux 0.32 beta 3 greeter
LXDE start menu in Spanish thanks to Rescatux 0.32 beta 3 greeter

Some thoughts:

This new beta release only has a new feature but it’s a long awaited feature. Now you will be able to select your own language, country and keyboard at boot so that, among other things, you can ask help in the integrated chat with your beloved keyboard layout.

This would not have been possible without the work from Tails project on tails-greeter. My tails-greeter fork is a quick and dirty modification so that it fits into Rescatux. However what I want to achieve is a default greeter in Debian Live so that one can choose its keyboard layout (and other settings) from Xorg.

I’m subscribed to tails-dev mailing list and I will soon ask them about how to modify tails-greeter so that we can share a common codebase between tails-greeter and live-greeter?.

I’m not convinced about them being based on gtk, and even worse, based on gdm3 which pulls quite many dependencies which I never thought were needed for a dm. Yes, I’m tempted to rewrite it into QT but maybe it’s not worth the effort.

I will probably try to modify tails-greeter so that it’s based on lightdm instead of gdm3. This task seems more feasible for me.

Finally on the translation side don’t expect Rescapp to be translated, even in Spanish, because translation subsystem is not implemented and nobody has offered to do so. I think I’m also dropping the Spanish documentation (No one has offered himself to translate it) because this way I won’t have to update it. One less task to do for the release.

What I mean is that while choosing your language, country and keyboard will affect the rest of the distribution do not expect Rescapp to be affected by the language and country settings. It will be only affected by the keyboard setting.

Roadmap for Rescatux 0.32 stable release:

You can check the complete changelog with link to each one of the issues at: Rescatux 0.32-freeze roadmap.

  • [#1323] GPT support
  • [#1364] Review Copyright notice
  • (Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2188] install-mbr : Windows 7 seems not to be fixed with it
  • (Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2190] debian-live. Include cpu detection and loopback cfg patches
  • (Fixed in 0.32b3) [#2191] Change Keyboard layout
  • [#2192] UEFI boot support
  • (Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2193] bootinfoscript: Use it as a package
  • (Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2199] Btrfs support
  • [#2205] Handle different default sh script
  • [#2216] Verify separated /usr support
  • (Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2217] chown root root on sudoers
  • [#2220] Make sure all the source code is available
  • (Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2221] Detect SAM file algorithm fails with directories which have spaces on them
  • (Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2227] Use chntpw 1.0-1 from Jessie
  • [#2231] SElinux support on chroot options
  • [#2233] Disable USB automount
  • [#2236] chntpw based options need to be rewritten for reusing code
  • [#2239]https://www.supergrubdisk.org/wizard-step-put-rescatux-into-a-media/suppose that the image is based on Super Grub2 Disk version and not Isolinux.The step about extracting iso inside an iso would not be longer needed.”>Update doc: Put Rescatux into a media for Isolinux based cd
  • (Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2259] Update bootinfoscript to the latest GIT version
  • [#2264] chntpw – Save prior registry files
  • [#2234] New option: Easy Grub fix
  • [#2235] New option: Easy Windows Admin

Other fixed bugs (0.32b2):

  • Rescatux logo is not shown at boot
  • Boot entries are named “Live xxxx” instead of “Rescatux xxxx”

Fixed bugs (0.32b1):

  • Networking detection improved (fallback to network-manager-gnome)
  • Bottom bar does not have a shorcut to a file manager as it’s a common practice in modern desktops. Fixed when falling back to LXDE.
  • Double-clicking on directories on desktop opens Iceweasel (Firefox fork) instead of a file manager. Fixed when falling back to LXDE.

Improvements (0.32b1):

  • Super Grub2 Disk is no longer included. That makes easier to put the ISO to USB devices thanks to standard multiboot tools which support Debian Live cds.
  • Rescapp UI has been redesigned
    • Every option is at hand at the first screen.
    • Rescapp options can be scrolled. That makes it easier to add new options without bothering on final design.
    • Run option screen buttons have been rearranged to make it easier to read.
  • RazorQT has been replaced by LXDE which seems more mature. LXQT will have to wait.
  • WICD has been replaced by network-manager-gnome. That makes easier to connect to wired and wireless networks.
  • It is no longer based on Debian Unstable (sid) branch.

Distro facts:

Feedback welcome:

Did you ever complain because of not being able to write in your own keyboard layout when asking for help in the integrated chat? Don’t miss your chance on testing if it works ok for your language and report us feedback !!!

Don’t forget that you can use:

Help Rescatux project:

I think we can expect two months maximum till the new stable Rescatux is ready, probably half of it because I manage to fix bugs very quick lately. Helping on these tasks is appreciated:

  • Making a youtube video for the new options.
  • Make sure documentation for the new options is right.
  • Make snapshots for new options documentation so that they don’t lack images.

If you want to help please contact us here:

Thank you and happy download!

Rescatux 0.32 beta 2 released

Download, News, Rescatux, Rescatux, Rescatux Beta, , , ,

Rescatux 0.32 beta 2 has been released.

Rescatux 0.32 Beta 1 Extended menu
Rescatux 0.32 Beta 1 Extended menu

Downloads:

Rescatux 0.32b2 size is about 444 Megabytes.

Rescatux 0.32b2 updated options : Restore Windows MBR, Blank Windows password, Promote Windows user to Admin and Unlock Windows user.
Rescatux 0.32b2 updated options : Restore Windows MBR, Blank Windows password, Promote Windows user to Admin and Unlock Windows user.

Some thoughts:

Update as 25th October 2014. I had mistakenly thought that install-mbr was a program from syslinux package. So, so sorry syslinux guys. Actually it is from the mbr package and the bug about turning a Windows 7 partition unbootable is already reported at: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=725417 . Now that I know what a disk id is I might write a tool on fixing these kind of problems, specially if you think that current stable Rescatux generates these errors.

I have had a hard work trying to make the winunlock command (for unlocking windows passwords from command line) because original winpasswd command was not working ok! I have sent an email to upstream chntpw so that it fixes it. Hopefully there is a new upstream release and we can enjoy it both fixes in Debian soon. Here there is my fork: chntpw-ng .

As you might imagine the biggest improvement in this release is that resetting windows password, promoting a windows user to Administrador and unlocking a windows user uses the latest version of chntpw which makes easier and more safe to add users to the admin group. It also fixes a bug that prevented a promoted admin user to be demoted from windows.

The other big improvement is that lilo is being used instead of mbr package syslinux so that you can finally solve this:

grub rescue>

( grub rescue > ) problems when you remove GNU/Linux partition from Windows itself. Unfortunately that only works if Windows boot partition is in the first hard disk. This is the Restore Windows MBR option which it’s going to be still BETA till many of you report me that it works ok. The difference is that the old version did break working Windows seven (and probably others) boot when used. So that it’s fixed.

There is not Super Grub2 Disk available from boot menu but, as you can see per, the pending bugs there will be one.

Finally you can boot Rescatux from Super Grub2 Disk thanks to its loopback.cfg file which I hope will be accepted upstream in Debian Live soon although they seem to be busy with Jessie freeze.

In the development arena I have removed old scripts and add new build folders so that everything is easier to understand when developing Rescatux.

This release is very needed so that we can all test this new 140201 chntpw version before I release the stable version in probably less than three months. So please report any bug if you find them. So, contrary to other versions I encourage to download it so that we can debug it.

I almost forgot that we have a new background for you to enjoy!

This is the first time that I recycle older changelog so that you can see the full changes as a whole (well, actually only from Rescatux 0.32b1).

There has been other improvements in this release so I encourage you to click on the Rescatux 0.32-freeze roadmap link so that you get more detailed information about them.

Roadmap for Rescatux 0.32 stable release:

You can check the complete changelog with link to each one of the issues at: Rescatux 0.32-freeze roadmap.

  • [#1323]    GPT support
  • [#1364]    Review Copyright notice
  • (Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2188]    install-mbr : Windows 7 seems not to be fixed with it
  • (Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2190]    debian-live. Include cpu detection and loopback cfg patches
  • [#2191]    Change Keyboard layout
  • [#2192]    UEFI boot support
  • (Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2193]    bootinfoscript: Use it as a package
  • (Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2199]    Btrfs support
  • [#2205]    Handle different default sh script
  • [#2216]    Verify separated /usr support
  • (Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2217]    chown root root on sudoers
  • [#2220]    Make sure all the source code is available
  • (Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2221]    Detect SAM file algorithm fails with directories which have spaces on them
  • (Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2227]    Use chntpw 1.0-1 from Jessie
  • [#2231]    SElinux support on chroot options
  • [#2233]    Disable USB automount
  • [#2236]    chntpw based options need to be rewritten for reusing code
  • [#2239]https://www.supergrubdisk.org/wizard-step-put-rescatux-into-a-media/suppose that the image is based on Super Grub2 Disk version and not Isolinux.The step about extracting iso inside an iso would not be longer needed.”>Update doc: Put Rescatux into a media for Isolinux based cd
  • (Fixed in: 0.32b2) [#2259]    Update bootinfoscript to the latest GIT version
  • [#2264]    chntpw – Save prior registry files
  • [#2234]    New option: Easy Grub fix
  • [#2235]    New option: Easy Windows Admin

Other fixed bugs (0.32b2):

  • Rescatux logo is not shown at boot
  • Boot entries are named “Live xxxx” instead of “Rescatux xxxx”

Fixed bugs (0.32b1):

  • Networking detection improved (fallback to network-manager-gnome)
  • Bottom bar does not have a shorcut to a file manager as it’s a common practice in modern desktops. Fixed when falling back to LXDE.
  • Double-clicking on directories on desktop opens Iceweasel (Firefox fork) instead of a file manager. Fixed when falling back to LXDE.

Improvements (0.32b1):

  • Super Grub2 Disk is no longer included. That makes easier to put the ISO to USB devices thanks to standard multiboot tools which support Debian Live cds.
  • Rescapp UI has been redesigned
    • Every option is at hand at the first screen.
    • Rescapp options can be scrolled. That makes it easier to add new options without bothering on final design.
    • Run option screen buttons have been rearranged to make it easier to read.
  • RazorQT has been replaced by LXDE which seems more mature. LXQT will have to wait.
  • WICD has been replaced by network-manager-gnome. That makes easier to connect to wired and wireless networks.
  • It is no longer based on Debian Unstable (sid) branch.

Distro facts:

Feedback welcome:
I’ve tried myself the distro in my dev environment for the new options, not the old ones and they seem to start ok. Another thing is doing a full test about their complete functionality. Please test the ISO and report back if something that worked on previous stable versions no longer works in this beta version.

Don’t forget that you can use:

Help Rescatux project if you cannot wait:

I think we can expect three  months maximum till the new stable Rescatux is ready, probably half of it because I manage to fix bugs very quick lately. These are some of the funny tasks that anyone can easily contribute to:

  • Making a youtube video for the new options.
  • Make sure documentation for the new options is right.
  • Translate the documentation of new options to Spanish.
  • Make snapshots for new options documentation so that they don’t lack images.

If you want to help please contact us here:

Thank you and happy download!

Rescatux 0.32 stable roadmap

News, Rescatux

This is the Rescatux 0.32 release roadmap. Please comment below if you feel that something is missing or incomplete here.

Help is welcomed in fixing these issues. Please join the Rescatux mailing list if you want to help either testing or either fixing one of these bugs.

You can check the complete changelog with link to each one of the issues at: Rescatux 0.32-freeze roadmap.

  • [#1323]    GPT support
  • [#1364]    Review Copyright notice
  • [#2188]    install-mbr : Windows 7 seems not to be fixed with it
  • [#2190]    debian-live. Include cpu detection and loopback cfg patches
  • [#2191]    Change Keyboard layout
  • [#2192]    UEFI boot support
  • [#2193]    bootinfoscript: Use it as a package
  • [#2199]    Btrfs support
  • [#2205]    Handle different default sh script
  • [#2216]    Verify separated /usr support
  • [#2217]    chown root root on sudoers
  • [#2220]    Make sure all the source code is available
  • [#2221]    Detect SAM file algorithm fails with directories which have spaces on them
  • [#2227]    Use chntpw 1.0-1 from Jessie
  • [#2231]    SElinux support on chroot options
  • [#2233]    Disable USB automount
  • [#2236]    chntpw based options need to be rewritten for reusing code
  • [#2234]    New option: Easy Grub fix
  • [#2235]    New option: Easy Windows Admin

New bug taxonomy for Rescatux

News, Rescatux

While I was going to categorize many offline notes that I have about Rescatux about bugs I thought again about current bugs versions.

I have added a note in the Rescatux wiki about the new bug versions.

  • version-beta: E.g. 0.32-beta are errors only found on beta versions
  •  version: E.g. 0.32 are errors only found in stable versions
  •  version-freeze: E.g. 0.32-freeze are error only found on beta versions that we have decided need to be addressed in order to release its associated stable version.

Unfortunately in order to see what are these affected bugs you need to have an account in Cenatic and then build an advanced query inside the Rescatux Bugs tracker. This is not bad because you can create an account in Cenatic Forge whenever you want to.

The purpose in this versioning change is knowing what it’s the minimal set of bugs that need to be solved so that I can release new Rescatux as an stable release. And, at the same time, not having to take care manually of a roadmap.

Feature requests are still present and are not affected by this version renaming.

2014 August development update

News, Rescatux, Super Grub2 Disk

Rescatux development

Debian Live improvements

I had planned to do a lot of Rescatux development during August but I just worked with the Debian Live part and I was quite proud of it.

As you might know one of the upstream projects for Rescapp is Debian Live. If you happen to contribute back to Debian Live not only Rescatux wins but also all the Debian Live derivatives. Including, probably, Ubuntu live cds.

CPU detection at boot

You might know that Rescatux has an autodetect boot entry at its boot. You can find it in versions prior to Rescatux 0.32b1. Boot system in Rescatux has been always based on Grub2 so that Super Grub2 Disk could be easily integrated. More than this an isolinux version of the iso was included . As a consequence a findiso boot parametre was needed for that to work. I also added (adapted from grml if I remember it ok) findiso to Debian Live back in the time. You will see that I’ll mention it later.

In order to avoid problems with people not being able to put the ISO into an USB using standard tools since Rescatux 0.32b1 Rescatux no longers depends on Grub2 as a bootloader but it depends on Syslinux / Isolinux.

That meant that Rescatux 0.32b1 did not have a cpu autodetect option. The amd64 option was the default one and if it did not work you were supposed to choose the 486 option.

I recently learnt that Syslinux / Isolinux had cpu detection capabilities through a com32 file.

I have implemented that functionality for both syslinux and grub2 in Debian Live. That patch won’t have been possible without the findiso option.

You can see how the auto detect (and the new logo) looks like in this Rescatux screenshot.

Rescatux Autodetect Syslinux based
Rescatux cpu autodetect is now based on Syslinux

 

Loopback cfg support

The loopback cfg support is a very good idea. As Grub2 can loop mount ISOs it can read its files without having to extract to temporary files.

So you can write an specific Grub2 file named loopback.cfg that specifies how the kernel (or initrd) can find the ISO so that it can loop mount it and gather their needed files to boot into a Desktop (or whatever your Live system does).

This Debian Live improvement means that when new Debian Live (or Debian Live derivatives) will be released they will have a working loopback.cfg by default.

Another reason for using Super Grub2 Disk Choose Bootable ISOs option.

I join an screenshot on how the loopback cfg looks like when run from SG2D. The reason why you don’t see Rescatux instead of Debian Gnu/Linux – Live is because Debian Live does not let you to easily change that string. I am talking about that issue to Debian Live developers too.

 

Rescatux new loopback cfg entry as seen from Choose Bootable ISOs option from Super Grub2 Disk
Rescatux new loopback cfg entry as seen from Choose Bootable ISOs option from Super Grub2 Disk

Super Grub2 Disk development

Smx work addition failed

I tried to gather additional functionality from Smx’s supergrub2 repository but it was not possible. Too many conflicts. I’ll wait till he rewrites the commits so that I can just fast-forward them.

So if you want to be able to use your own keyboard layout at grub shell or being able to chainload a partition manually you will have to wait.

Grub 2.02 not so stable

Grub 2.02 has not been released as stable yet. It’s still beta.

The first problem happened when SG2D made Virtualbox to hang. Apparently it only happened when I tried to list files in an special partition called: (cd,apple4)/ .

It seems it only happens when you build EFI and you use Virtualbox. This is why it was so hard to detect. The bug has been already been solved.

However the second problem is related on how Grub 2.02 tries to detect new devices. Grub 2.00 had an specific way of doing that by loading specific modules.

Now it seems you have to use the new nativedisk command and it will detect them for you and even rename the new devices so that they replace the existing ones.

Actually, I have not understood how it is supposed to work but it might make more difficult the Everything + option. Probably I will have to remove it.

So the error happens when running nativedisk. Grub2 seems to do some weird ahci calls and Virtualbox aborts the VM without saying anything in the logs.

So, even if Grub 2.02 gets into Debian as an stable package I’ll take a double look at it because of nativedisk and maybe other problems that might arise.

Super Grub(2) Disk: More than 3,5 million downloads since 2005

News, Super Grub Disk, Super Grub2 Disk

Super Grub2 Disk has recently achieved 500,000 downloads on cenatic forge.

I am going to share with you some numbers from old Super Grub Disk, new Super Grub2 Disk and older forges.

  • Thanks to a friend who hosted the web server around 2006, 2007 I setup a tiki-wiki page and counted the downloads on adrian15.raulete.net. : 53,166 downloads. This was Super Grub Disk probably when I still did not use variables but pre-made constants in many many grub files.
  • Spanish Junta de Extremadura setup a forge specially aimed at Linex project.  Thank you forjamari people once again! I joined them around 2008. No GRUB2 was widely available so this is still Super Grub Disk : 1,603,685 downloads.
  • Then there was a time when Super Grub Disk was self hosted and with four more mirrors. I remember Benjamin and a French guy. Sorry I cannot thank you all properly.
  • Finally I found Berlios where  there are both Super Grub Disk and Super Grub2 Disk downloads: 1,504,207 .

So if we sum up downloads for both Super Grub Disk and Super Grub2 Disk we get: 504,739 + 53,166 + 1,603,685 + 1,504,207 =

 

3,665,797 downloads

It’s difficult to compute a most exact figure. Downloads from when Super Grub Disk had mirrors need to be added. Torrent downloads also. Third party file download site dowloads, et caetera. I let you, the current Super Grub(2) Disk and Rescatux user to imagine it.

Hopefully some years into the future we can see a similar figure for Rescatux 😉 .

You might be interested in reading the Super Grub Disk is outdated post and also the last Super Grub2 Disk release: Super Grub2 Disk 2.00s2 where I thank the current Super Grub2 Disk collaborators and developers whom I almost forgot to thank in this article.

Download Super Grub2 Disk

Vote on Sourceforge by downloading Rescatux

News, Rescatux

Sourceforge has selected Rescatux as one of the Projects of the Week, June 23, 2014. That means that in this specific week you can see it as a featured project in Sourceforge frontpage.

If you had thought about downloading Rescatux in the next days I encourage you do to do it before June 30, 2014 so that it is taken into account into the final Project of the Month Voting as explained in Revival of Weekly Featured Projects and Project of the Month Voting .

If Rescatux performs as one of the nine best performing projects by dowloads it will appear in Project of the Month voting poll which I would encourage you to vote in the next weeks thanks to a Sourceforge account :).

So, that’s why I have added some links at the top of article so that it’s easier for you to download it.

Remember that we don’t want to cheat. Just download Rescatux if you had already planned to download it but not before June 30, 2014.

Thank you!

Super Grub2 Disk 2.00s2 articles

News, Super Grub2 Disk

Introduction

This is a summary of the articles around the Internet that have announced Super Grub2 Disk 2.00s2 release, what I think about them, what they have added, what they have missed and the overall reactions.

English

Linuxtracker

This was the first site where you could download all the Super Grub2 Disk 2.00s2 binaries and source code thanks to the Super Grub2 Disk torrent which I uploaded myself. As the torrent users not only download the files but also upload them I release it two days before the downloads are public in the forge.

Softpedia

I must admit that I like the previous Softpedia articles about Super Grub2 Disk from when they were only betas or release candidates:

  • Super Grub2 Disk 2.00 Is Based on GRUB 2 : This one was not very good because the piece of news was Super Grub2 Disk beging based on GRUB 2.00 not GRUB 2. That’s not the same thing because Super Grub2 Disk was already based on GRUB 2 when it was Super Grub2 Disk 1.98s1 because GRUB 1.98 is also GRUB 2 according to upstream GRUB syntax. However it was a welcomed piece of news because many people discovered that an equivalent for Super Grub Disk but aimed at Grub2 existed and its name was: Super Grub2 Disk.
  • Super Grub2 Disk 2.01 Beta 1 Can Help You Boot in Any System Without a Boot Loader: This piece of news includes for the first time the Everything option and a reference to new boot technology based on conditional AFD which once in a year you will discover for sure.
  • Boot in Any System That Lost Its Bootloader with Super Grub2 Disk 2.01 Beta 2: If you are a heay desktop user, …, you might have been confronted with the loss of original bootloader. … Super Grub2 Disk 2.01 Beta 2… acts almost like a Live CD GRUB system, which can be very useful sometimes. It makes a bad assumption about the Super Grub2 Disk size. It was not a couple of MB but 11 MB.

Even the current Super Grub2 Disk Editor Review with five stars out of a total of five stars on their download page is quite overwhelming:

When booting the live medium, all you’ll see is a GRUB bootloader with a plethora of options.

(…)

we can declare it the best tool for booting into broken GRUB bootloaders.

Well, the fact here is that the other tool available for this task is a raw Grub2 Disk, so as an unique I think it’s both the best and the worst tool :).

And finally the current piece of news (I told them myself there was an update):

Get in Any System Without a Boot Loader with Super Grub2 Disk 2.00s2 : Although it persists in the couple of MB size error and it renames BSD systems as BDS ones the article is brilliant. Not only it reuses paragraphs from former articles and explains the development of the tool but it also quotes about the release itself in order to make it more complete.

Freecode

This is another site where I announced myself the availability of Super Grub2 Disk 2.00s2. They latest almost three days till they finally aproved my update. They might have been busy probably. They did not do too much editing on my original text.

Update: Freecode is stalling and probably closing the next months.

Reddit r/linux

Super Grub2 Disk 2.00s2 released has currently 12 positive votes and 4 negative votes. Nothing to comment here.

Linux G

This is an original piece of news ! Thank you! .: Repair Your System’s GRUB Via The Super GRUB2 Disk 2.00S2 ISO . Although it is not attaching the current snapshot for 2.00s2 is explaining the new Super Grub2 Disk features quite well.

Spanish

Barrapunto

This is another article which I wrote myself and that translated into Spanish most of the original English article. You can find it in: Super Grub2 Disk 2.00s2 disponible. When writing this article it has been for three days in the main page queue for some Barrapunto editor to polish the piece of news and promote it to frontpage. Hopefully they will promote it soon.

Random download page

As I don’t want to promote any of these rubbish pages I won’t put a link or name to him. Instead of searching for an Spanish article (barrapunto) the page is google-translating the original article and result is awful.

MuyLinux

I told them myself about the new release. Nueva versión estable de Super Grub2 Disk 2 was not made online but only after a week after the actual release. That what’s my fault because I did not take the time to told them about it one or two weeks before the final release. That’s the reason why the piece of news is not as complete as it could not be.

I also had to send them an updated screenshot of the VM snapshot because my cropped snapshot (only showed the menu and not black background) did not fit into their design. Hopefully all the design problems can be solved so easily.

What I most like about this piece of news is that I could discuss with people in the piece of news comments themselves. Not always you have time to get so much feedback.

In the comments you can see that I think about removing Super Grub2 Disk from inside Rescatux (like I did in Rescatux 0.32b1), about using LxQT or not in Rescatux, and some other topics.  And well, maybe rethinking how I rewrite Rescatux changelogs.

Taringa

Super Grub2 Disk 2, nueva version estable from Taringa comes as a copy and paste from Muylinux piece of news.  As per a request from a user they add some instructions on how to put Super Grub2 Disk into a USB. These instructions wipe the USB, that’s ok, but they don’t make it explicit! They should have better linked to official instructions on how to do that.

Another funny thing about this piece of news is a user comment where it says the tool has saved some people from commiting suicide. Finally there’s the user that says LoL at my keys explanation, well, if you think it enough you will see that it’s not easy enough to infer which keys you have to use.

Meneame

Super Grub2 Disk 2.00s2 disponible from Meneame was very special because I usually visit that page. One of the users infered that I was able to workaround Secure Boot to boot into Windows 8.1. I had to tell them that I was not going to support Secure Boot at all.

German

I always like the German articles because they seem to be quite serious when doing their articles.

Prolinux

This site usually clones the Freecode piece of news. This time they also wrote an article: Alles-Booter Super Grub 2 Disk in neuer Version 2.00s2 which kind of means The one which boots everything Super Grub2 Disk.

 that can really identify and boot all operating systems installed on a hard drive with a new boot option

Super Grub2 Disk boots everything is quite a good slogan and I hadn’t thought of it because there is always an Operating System that doesn’t boot for one reason or another. The article is just a rewritten Freecode announcement with some references to the different supported hardware platforms and images.

There’s a good point about an user comment: They are only x86 platforms. What about SPARC, Power*, parisc, etc? Well, I don’t have such a hardware to build these release and none of the current Super Grub2 Disk developers or collaborators have asked or offered themselves for such builds.

So Michael you are welcome to build it by yourself out of the source code. We will help you.

 Linux Magazin

This is an article that appeared as Super Grub 2 Disk 2.00s2 bootet fast alles in Linux Magazin (a popular Linux Magazine in Germany) and that also appeared as Boots Everything in Linux-community.de.

The article says that the software is localised into German among other languages but German translation is not updated to cover all the Super Grub2 Disk 2.00s2 options. I couldn’t wait for a German (and other languages) for discovering beta versions being incomplete and updating them.

The best thing about this article is the description next to the Super Grub2 Disk main menu image:

Almost too good to be true: Super Grub Disk 2 2.00s2 promises to find all install operating systems.

There’s a little confusion here. There’s an option called Everything which searches for all the Operating Systems that Super Grub2 Disk can search of. Not everyone of them. One operating system which it’s not going to be booted is Solaris or OpenSolaris because neither upstream Grub2 nor Debian’s Grub2 (the one we currently use as a base) don’t have ZFS support because of license issues. The other one might be ReactOS although they once told me that if you could boot Windows systems you could also boot ReactOS ones. I should probably check what’s the current state.

IT rig

The IT rig piece of news entitled Super Grub2 Disk – Bootmanager Grub mit Live CD einfach reparieren which means Simply repair Grub boot loader with Super Grub2 Disk live CD it’s quite personal because the author points about him reporting two years ago the beta version. Then the tour video is mentioned about having a poor sound quality. That is true and that’s why I added the English subtitles before the stable release.

I see that he repeats twice the misunderstanding that Super Grub2 Disk repairs boot loaders. That’s not true it only lets you boot into them.

Update June 24, 2014: After reading this post IT rig webmaster has fixed the misunderstanding that current version can repair boot loaders. Well, not the article title actually, but I think it’s better not mess with article titles. Thank you!

Russian

nnm-club.me

This is one of these pages that have a lot of advertisements related to downloads and that are usually torrent pages. I usually hate these pages but I have to link to: Super Grub2 Disk 2.00s2 [Multi] because not only the use a custom Super Grub2 Disk logo but they also have some screenshots that they have made themselves. I know it because they are black and white and because the Super Grub2 Disk version matches the current stable version. They seem to have a windows partition in their virtual hard disk according to the snapshots.

Another curious thing is that the features are taken from the wiki page not from the release or main Super Grub2 Disk page.  I would have prefered them to use the non-wiki features explanations.

opennet.ru

Выпуск Super Grub2 Disk 2.00s2 is the best piece of news. Why? Because of the users of course. Someone did not like the default colours. It’s funny because in the old Super Grub Disk you had more than six colour choices and now you only have this default colour or black and white.

As I said someone did  not like the default colours and another user pointed him to Colour ON/OFF option. I guess he would have like the Matrix colour from old Super Grub Disk version.

Another user is even more radical. Why don’t just use the terminal thanks to ‘c’ button? Well, that’s the whole reason for Super Grub2 Disk… being a GUI or TUI if you want.

Finally someone said something about u-boot which seems to a bootloader usually used in SD cards for booting embedded devices.

Let’s do an easy joke :

In Soviet Russia Operating System boots you.

Italian

lffl linux freedom

The piece of news RILASCIATO SUPER GRUB2 DISK 2.00S2 also announces Italian translation support although it is not complete. It also recommends Unetbootin which I’m not sure how well it works with Super Grub2 Disk. In our site we recommend Yumi although the perfect method is using dd.

I personally like lffl because in former Rescatux or Super Grub2 Disk piece of news there were many comments from users.

Czech

root.cz

Super Grub2 Disk: pomocník s rozbitým bootováním which means Super Grub2 Disk: Help with a broken boot is not a very long article. What makes me laugh is the mention about the video: The basic idea of what you can do with Super Grub2 Disk is in the attached video. Well, that’s not actually true. In the video I never try to boot any of the Operating Systems that I show. And that’s what Super Grub2 Disk mainly does. Booting into an OS then meant to have to reboot and made the video longer. I plan to re-record a tour video anyways because I think it’s too complex. Not in the short them though.

Portuguese

Pplware

Super Grub2 Disk 2 – Quando o sistema não arranca… is quite an original article. It shows more screenshots than other piece of news. However they say that UI being translated into several languages is something new. I’m not 100% sure but I would say that former 1.98s1 version was already translated to several languages.

SempreUpdate

Como reparar o Grub via Super GRUB2 Disk 2.00S2 ISO, inclusive dual boot com Windows! makes the error of saying that Super Grub2 Disk 2.00s2 fixes the grub while it is not true. You can boot into your system by the means of it though.

Conclusions

  • Softpedia people, although not always 100% accurate write some very nice articles about Super Grub2 Disk
  • Most people tend to copy and paste the original piece of news from major media. If they try to write their own piece of news not only their SEO will be better but they will make me happier.
  • I tend to check piece of news comments (specially in Spanish) to gather feedback from them.
  • Most people have not yet learnt that Super Grub2 Disk no longer fixes grub (Although enabling your to boot into your system fixes your problem of not accessing your OS 🙂 ). Do not expect that software is always going to have the same features. Software sometimes removes some features.
  • I probably have to write a Press page with some of these conclusions.

 

I am personally waiting for an old fashioned article where Super Grub2 Disk is test in a Lab environment (E.g. Virtualbox) with several Operating systems and dual boot scenarios. These scenarios can be used to evaluate Super Grub2 Disk itself. You know a paper Linux Magazine article. I have learnt that an Spanish paper Linux Magazine was going to be closed.

Not sure I will ever read such an article. Nostalgia.