Catbird Linux 2.3 to upload 2024/02/24 (Boot issue bugfix)

Fellow Catbird Linux users,

Catbird Linux is being updated to version 2.3 and will be uploaded to SourceForge within 24 hours. The system has received a kernel upgrade to Linux Xanmod kernel 6.6, along with a bug fix which prevented proper booting of the iso file on flash drives. This may affect you if you have set it up using Rufus or Ventoy. Apologies for the inconvenience if this gave you trouble.

If you set up a bootable Catbird Linux flash drive and received an error message complaining that the bootloader could not load the kernel, here is the fix for Catbird Linux v2.0 through 2.2:

1. navigate in the root file system to the configuration file /boot/grub/grub.cfg
2. edit the menu entries so they point to the correct file names: initrd.img and vmlinuz (without version numbers)

The menu entries should look like this:

# Live boot
menuentry "Live system (amd64)" --hotkey=l {
    linux   /live/vmlinuz boot=live quiet splash findiso=${iso_path}
    initrd  /live/initrd.img
}
menuentry "Live system (amd64 fail-safe mode)" {
    linux   /live/vmlinuz boot=live components memtest noapic noapm nodma nomce nolapic nosmp nosplash vga=788
    initrd  /live/initrd.img
}

If you are using a multiboot SSD or hard drive set up with an old fashioned grub2 configuration, you can use a grub config similar to this example, which runs on my laptop (booting in bios / non-efi mode):

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

menuentry 'Catbird Liinux v2.2 (Debian)' {
    set isofile="/isofiles/catbirdlinux-2.2.0.iso"
    loopback loop $isofile
    linux (loop)/live/vmlinuz boot=live findiso=$isofile threadirqs mitigations=off
    initrd (loop)/live/initrd.img
}

menuentry 'Catbird Liinux NEXT v2.3 (Debian)' {
    set isofile="/isofiles/catbirdlinux-2.3.0.iso.iso"
    loopback loop $isofile
    linux (loop)/live/vmlinuz boot=live findiso=$isofile threadirqs mitigations=off
    initrd (loop)/live/initrd.img
}

I hope this helps! The new iso will be available shortly.

Cheers,
Phil Collier / Catbird Linux