Hey guys and gals...Frank Castle here.
First of all, I want to thank all of you for your positive feedback. It was quite a challenge to get going at first, but it was so worth it in the end, especially after my idea made it to Hak5. I thought I would drop by and offer my advice to some of you who had questions...
1) jdogherman
For TRK, the appropriate grub command is:
title Trinity Rescue Kit
kernel /kernel.trk initrd=/initrd.trk ramdisk_size=49152 root=/dev/ram0 vga=788 splash=verbose
initrd /initrd.trk
And as for Ophcrack, for the latest version, installed with Stiltaz blah blah blah, since everything (except for the tables) are in the boot folder, both the boot folder AND the tables folder must be on the root of the device. At least, that's what worked for me.
2) hurtcake
Kon-boot was a tough one to get running. I had to use the .img version of it for it to work at all. The grub command I used (which is a little different than Darren's) was:
title Kon-Boot
map (hd0,0)/FD0-konboot-v1.1-2in1.img (fd0)
map –hook
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
map –hook
chainloader (fd0)+1
rootnoverify (fd0)
As far as administrative privligies and all that...as far as I know, as long as the user your logged in as is an administrator than you have all administative power. But as far as paring a payload with it...I have no clue about that.
And I can't remember if you got it working or not, but my Hiren's grub command is:
title Hirens BootCD
kernel /HBCD/memdisk
initrd /HBCD/boot.gz
3) coreyja
I tried to partition and do all that jazz with these thumb drives for too long, and I gave up. Although it is possible to give one multiple partitions, only the first one (if even that one) is visible by windows (which I assume you are running...don't shoot me if your'e not), so you can't really mess with the other partitions at all unless you change registry values to make it appear as a usb hard drive (which I stray away from...bad experience). Plus add in the hassle of trying to figure out before-hand how big to make the partitions, etc. was just too much for me. What I do instead to keep clutter to a minimum is make all of the grub files and folders hidden (since grub/linux doesn't really care if windows says they are hidden).
4) ChrisTek
As for FreeDOS, when you say:
title FreeDOS
root (hd0,2)
kernel /memdisk
initrd /freedos.img floppy
you are telling grub to look for these files in the 3rd partition of your thumbdrive, which I assume doesn't exist. Change the line "root (hd0,2)" to "root (hd0,0)" or simply just take it out.
For Hirens, the HCBD folder needs to be in the root of the drive (at least for my version). The grub command is given above
And for BT3, I don't know if it will make a difference, but my grub command was slightly different. I would give it a try:
title BackTrack 3
kernel /bootbt3/vmlinuz vga=0x317 ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw autoexec=xconf;kdm
initrd /bootbt3/initrd.gz
*Other Notes*
A password can be added by obtaining a UNIX md5. This can be done from Grub by:
1) Booting up the drive and pressing "c" at the grub promt
2) Typing in "md5crypt" then entering in your desired password
3) Copying the resultant md5 hash on paper, etc.
4) Adding the line password --md5 *your md5 here* either after the preliminary lines (i.e. - after timeout, splash image, etc.) (This will require a password to make any changes to the menu.lst from the grub prompt) AND/OR after the title of a distro (This will require a password to boot the distro)
A blank line can be added (for a seperatory line) by entering in:
title
kernal
initrd
Finally, a reboot option can be added, if you so wish...
title Reboot
reboot
Let me know if you have any questions, and thanks again,
Frank Castle
