MOFO 8 boot issue

[Bud]

Hello,

I am having trouble getting things to boot. I am using the Ventoy method. With MOFO, selecting run the ISO just gives a reboot. when selecting Grub2, the menu asks about booting Catbird for some reason. With both MOFO and Skywave, I get to loading vmlinuz and initrd, then reboots.

Thanks.

[Brightflash64]

Hello Bud,

That behavior is exactly what I was experiencing on one of my test machines (a 14 year old Turion CPU). It stopped booting the iso file when I switched from the older realtime kernel and took a much more recent version 6.5 one. It may be that this newer kernel won't work with the bios in your hardware. It is a type x64v4 in this most recent iso.

Just in case it is a matter of the bootloader setup, here is an example of working Grub code. Those other similar projects, which I bumped back to an x64v3 kernel are shown here too. MOFO is different, as the most recent upload is still Ubuntu based and the kernel is in the "casper" directory. The next upload will be Debian Sid based, with an x64v3 kernel similar to the Skywave and Catbird projects.

Here is the Grub2 code in the MOFO iso, which works on drives set up with Ventoy:

set menu_color_normal=white/black
set menu_color_highlight=black/light-gray

set timeout=10
menuentry "Try MOFO Linux without installing" {
    set gfxpayload=keep
    linux   /casper/vmlinuz boot=casper live-media-path=/casper \
      ignore_uuid fsck.mode=skip clocksource=tsc tsc=reliable \
      elevator=mq-deadline ---
    initrd  /casper/initrd
}
menuentry "Check disc for defects" {
    set gfxpayload=keep
    linux   /casper/vmlinuz boot=casper live-media-path=/casper \
      ignore_uuid integrity-check ---
    initrd  /casper/initrd
}

On bare metal, I have been booting these isos from Grub2 with this code in the config file.
MOFO Linux 8.4 is older and still uses Ubuntu, with the kernel in the /casper directory. The
others are Debian live isos:

set root=(hd0,1)
set default=0
set timeout=10
set gfxmode=1024x768
insmod ext2

menuentry 'Skywave Linux v5.0.1 (Debian)' {
     set isofile="/isofiles/skywavelinux-5.0.0.iso"
     loopback loop 
     linux (loop)/live/vmlinuz boot=live findiso= threadirqs mitigations=off
     initrd (loop)/live/initrd.img
}

menuentry 'Catbird Linux v2.3.0 (Debian)' {
     set isofile="/isofiles/catbirdlinux-2.3.0.iso"
     loopback loop 
     linux (loop)/live/vmlinuz boot=live findiso= threadirqs mitigations=off
     initrd (loop)/live/initrd.img
}

menuentry 'MOFO Linux 8.4 (Ubuntu)' {
    set isofile="/isofiles/mofolinux-8.4.iso"
    loopback loop $isofile
    linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=$isofile \ ignore_uuid fsck.mode=skip threadirqs mitigations=off \
zswap.enabled=1 --
    initrd (loop)/casper/initrd
}

If you hardware's bios will accept the x64v3 or x64v4 kenels, this should help you get any of those isos running. They'll run either on a flashdrive or on a HDD / SSD partition set up for multibooting.