– The GRUB UEFI Parrot bootloader is missing the NTFS GRUB module –
Because of the inclusion of a > 4 GB .squashfs file, which prevents the use of FAT32, Parrot Security should include the NTFS GRUB 2 module when building its UEFI GRUB bootloader, so that it can support File System Transposition for NTFS, as a means to create bootable media without using third party utilities. This is especially relevant for Windows users, since Windows does not come with a native dd utility whereas one can easily create an NTFS media and extract the files using native Windows OS utilities (and, since this may be seen as a contention point for UEFI boot, please be aware that many modern PC platforms do include a native NTFS UEFI driver, thereby enabling UEFI boot from both FAT and NTFS).
With the consideration that a major other Linux distributions (Debian, Arch, Ubuntu) do make a deliberate effort to support File System Transposition on the same footing as dd imaging, so as to provide choice and flexibility for boot media creation, it does seem important to us that Parrot should follow suit, as forcing users to rely on dd imaging only is restrictive and does come with its own set of limitations and issues which are often too easily brushed aside by distro maintainers not realizing that limiting the means of creating bootable media can very negatively affect their users and, in some circumstances, may result in potential users giving up on trying to install the OS altogether…
The inclusion of the NTFS GRUB module would also allow popular utilities like Rufus to create working bootable media without having to force users to use DD mode, as Rufus uses File System Transposition in its default mode for instance.
Currently, the lack of inclusion of the NTFS module in the GRUB UEFI bootloader results in an unbootable media on UEFI systems that should have no issue booting from NTFS, as whereas the GRUB UEFI loader gets properly read and launched from NTFS, GRUB itself is unable to access its necessary configuration files and modules, and bails out to the GRUB prompt.
- ParrotOS iso in use:
Tested with Parrot-security-5.3_amd64.iso.
- Application used for flashing the iso:
No application – just extracting the files to a manually created NTFS partition (which, again, for the record, is a method of installation you can test with a distro like current Debian, and which you will find does work).
Can also be tested with Rufus.
- Required changes ParrotOS needs to apply:
I wasn’t able to find what script Parrot uses to build the GRUB UEFI bootloader, but I can tell that fixing this should be as easy as adding ntfs when invoking grub-mkimage, alongside the part_gpt, part_msdos and fat parameters that should already be set as part of the invocation options.
So can the Parrot distro maintainers please make sure that they update their GRUB bootloader generation process to always include ntfs as a module?