replace Express Gate with UNR on alternate power button

[samsonite801]

Maybe people could think about dual boot XP/W7 and Ubuntu and forget about the Express Gate boot button?

I think what these people are after is to remap the command of that left-hand power button so they could in-effect, have a one-button-press solution to enter Ubuntu, or a different button-press to directly enter Windows. Also the coolness factor of this is way higher than the Express Gate because Express Gate is about worthless and it is paining to know that the hardware of this awesome machine is so uselessly utilized into this configuration where the button does this totally pointless function.

If the command that runs right after initial powerup (on pushing the left power button) in the BIOS could somehow be remapped to load a GRUB bootloader while the right power button would just initiate the standard MBR which would load the M$ bootloader (BCD) then this might be how to make this possible. My big brother used to know how to hack into BIOS images and manipulate them. He's a very busy programmer now so getting his time is hard but I should ask him if he thinks this task is feasible, and even if he might even know where one would start at trying to figure out how to make it possible. My feeling is that if this mapping is done in the BIOS image that this might be possible to change with an altered BIOS image but if the mapping to a command is done using some other protocol or done on the hardware level, then it might be impossible to remap it. If one even knew what the command was that gets initiated, you might be able to make that command instead load a second alternate MBR type file which would load a GRUB bootloader. Because if you had a GRUB bootloader that had Ubuntu set up as the default OS set to load in 1 second, and then you still had the standard MBR which loaded the M$ (BCD) bootloader and Windows 7 would be the default OS on there set to load in 1 second, then this would be ideal.

From what I understand, Express Gate is just an image file on the hard drive and some command possibly starting from the BIOS invokes this image to be loaded and ran. People have manipulated this Express Gate image file (in other forums) as well to change functionality of the Express Gate OS, so this might be a potential place to re-direct in the begininng before it executes the running of whatever script or code loads Express Gate, and instead run a command to load GRUB from. Need more research.

I DO believe this would be super cool to engineer this function into my new 1005PR, but the question would be is itworth the time to figure out HOW to do it? I see a lot of people here asking for the same thing (ie they want their pizza delivered in 30 mins or less), but how many of these people asking are willing to pitch in and help do the research because I too am busy and I do not have gobs of surplus time to figure this out all on my own. If everybody does research and Googles a lot with me we might have a chance at figuring this out. Perhaps as a far-fetched last resort if we could find some contact at ASUS who could even offer some insight as to this issue.
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[Hansmc]

A few things I found:

On my Asus 1005pe express gate is in the windows partition in a directory called ASUS.SYS. In there there is a bunch of *.sqx files that can be uncompressed with unsquachfs command.

I looked around to try and find something like a boot loader that could be edited, but have not got very far.

I have a feeling this will not help much but it is the only thing I can figure out. One option would be if we could put a command in there some place that would make express gate boot into a full Linux os on another partition after it has partly or fully booted itself.

Any ideas?

Thank-you.

[ElTimo]

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I had a thought. Maybe there's some way to manipulate the *.sqx files to contain an installation of Ubuntu. That would make messing around with BIOS images and the bootloader unnecessary, right?

[kalos]

Phoronix forums has info on hacking the ExpressGate install (to change apps and fix resolution).

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...sus-Splashtop)

[Percius]

I read through ALL 25 pages trying to figure out how to load another Linux distro via the express boot. There was some interest burred within plenty of other comments.

1st. Darkstar2000 on 5-11-2009 @11:58AM claimed you could launch ubuntu with a command such as this...

kexec --load /mnt/dvmdrive_root/linux/vmlinuz --append="root=UUID=XXX ro vga=791 pci=nobios pnpbios=off" --initrd "/mnt/dvmdrive_root/linux/initrd.img --console-vga
kexec -e

He notes that you still have to create an icon with that as the command and you still have to click the icon....

Someone else noted that it uses Bootsplash... As this is a linux graphical linux boot loader one would presume this could be modified.

Note: There are 2 different kinds of Express Gate installs out there... Some use space on the hard drive while others have a dedicated solid state for them. It seems some solidstates are read only and others are readwrite... I am dealing with the harddrive variety...

[Percius]

I do not know how to make Asus ExpressGate (splashtop) load any os, however ASUS ExpressGate Cloud (VideACE) uses Grub (legacy). It has a standard menu.lst file... From that file it is easy enough to chainload grub2.

I tried loading my kernel directly however the build of grub does not seem to have ext4 support and seemed to ignore stage 1.5 files... I am sure this could be fixed, but having a standard grub that is auto updated when kernels get updated seemed to make sense to me.

[Swindlerz]

hehe im here to join in, i got the ul30a and of course i got this button that gives me xpressgate, if only i can change it to boot something else up... hmmm

[stevenswall]

Definitely interested... I have the UL80Ag, with the HDD version of ExpressGate (Splashtop) This laptop is nearing the end of it's cycle though, so I'm not sure much will come of the second power button.

[Nohajc]

I do not know how to make Asus ExpressGate (splashtop) load any os, however ASUS ExpressGate Cloud (VideACE) uses Grub (legacy). It has a standard menu.lst file... From that file it is easy enough to chainload grub2.

I tried loading my kernel directly however the build of grub does not seem to have ext4 support and seemed to ignore stage 1.5 files... I am sure this could be fixed, but having a standard grub that is auto updated when kernels get updated seemed to make sense to me.

OK, I may have a solution for booting another distro with ASUS ExpressGate Cloud.
But, as I haven't got any real ASUS box (at least not yet, I am planning to buy eee soon), I was testing the boot process only in VirtualBox (quite surprising that I could actually install ExpressGate from a Windows XP virtual machine - and it worked).

After experimenting with menu.lst located in C:\ExpressGate I realized that this particular version of Grub is somewhat crippled to say the least. And it's probably on purpose. It seems that it lacks any support of ext file system completely.
As soon as you try to change root to an ext partition it just gets stuck. However, it can start loading any kernel and initrd image present in the same (Windows) partition. That is until you try to set the root to a linux partition - in that case, you end up with kernel panic. In one word: this Grub is completely useless.

To "boot up our way from this mess" we need a better bootloader. So, I figured why not use Grub4dos. To make it clear, I wasn't trying to replace current Grub (maybe it could be done, but I'm not that capable hacker). I chose a simpler way.

This is what you should do:

1. Download Grub4dos from sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/grub4dos/)

2. Install your preferred linux distro (Ubuntu Natty in this example)
When you'll be setting up bootloader, and this is important, you should probably install it to the partition (e.g. /dev/sda3) not to MBR (we don't want to compromise Asus' way of booting) Also, we must not delete Windows partition, of course.

This is how the partition table could look like at the end:

/dev/sda1 [BOOT] NTFS - Windows loader
/dev/sda2        NTFS - Windows root (C:\)
/dev/sda3        ext4  - Ubuntu root (/)
/dev/sda5        swap

(and Ubuntu's Grub2 goes to /dev/sda3)

3. Edit menu.lst and prepare Grub4dos
The original C:\ExpressGate\menu.lst looks like this:

default saved
timeout 0
hiddenmenu

title minik
  kernel /ExpressGate/vace ro no_win_installer=0 pci=nocrs i8042.reset quiet video=intelfb acpi_backlight=vendor acpi_display_output=vendor vaKBD=us VALANG=en_US fastreboot=no acpi_osi=Linux av_flag=1 rw_flag=1 debug_log=1 nwm=1
  initrd /ExpressGate/vace-id
title Win_1 
  savedefault 0    
  rootnoverify (hd0,0)
  chainloader +1
title Win_2
  savedefault 0
  rootnoverify (hd0,1)
  chainloader +1
title Win_3
  savedefault 0
  rootnoverify (hd0,2)
  chainloader +1
title Win_4
  savedefault 0
  rootnoverify (hd0,3)
  chainloader +1

Now, we'll just edit the first entry:

...
title minik
  kernel /grub.exe
title Win_1 
  savedefault 0    
...

For this to work we'll need to copy grub.exe and grldr from grub4dos archive to C:\
and then we create second menu.lst file also in C:\ (it will be used for accessing our ext partition and loading Grub2)

It can look something like this:

timeout 0
default 0
hiddenmenu

title Ubuntu 11.04
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/grub/core.img

From Grub4dos you could of course load Ubuntu kernel directly but this way you won't have to change anything manually after a kernel update (just let Grub2 take care of it).

4. Reboot the system and see what happens

OK, now I just wait for you to try it and confirm whether it works.
EDIT: Yes, it works just fine.

Unfortunately, owners of the older versions of ExpressGate cannot use this method because it is based on Splashtop and I've no idea how it boots... but maybe someone will figure it out eventually.

[Nohajc]

No one interested?