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So finally started testing with live USB…
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Background:Although I use AntiX as main system for everyday use, there are times when I need to use other Linux distros for different purposes; specially, or even specifically, for external works.
Optical media (CDs/DVDs) have been decreasing in usage -and even discouraged-; having one USB stick for each and every Linux distro is impractical, and even feels kind of infamous, even if just a few of them. Solution? Multiboot USB.
Of course there’s a number of tools out there to do this (YUMI, Unetbootin…), but I was wondering if there was by chance a more “native”, or “manual” way, to do this on Linux. Long story short, after searching, I eventually found this tool:
https://github.com/hackerncoder/multibootusb
Which is actually a script implementation of this
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Multiboot_USB_drive
Overall, Grub loopback devices are being used.It has worked pretty well for me. I agree with what the Arch Linux wiki mentions about the advantages and disadvantages; but at least *many* distros seem to work, and it’s only a matter of copying the ISO file(s). Other multiboot tools extract the ISOs contents, and even modify them sometimes. Not necessarily bad, but I’d prefer otherwise if possible…
End of background
————————————————————————————So I tried Antix 19.4 x64 live system with this multiboot USB tool. Given that AntiX is listed in the tool’s mbusb.d directory, “it should be supported” as well. And yes, fortunately it worked, just needed to update some of the boot parameters a bit.
It also uses the fromiso=* boot parameter, which according to the /live/README file present in AntiX live system (an excerpt here), is “deprecated, yet still supported”. Well, this is one good reason to still support it.
Aside the obvious improve in loading speeds, booting from USB seemingly does not have this past issue at all for some reason.
Once booted, unfortunately I noticed very similar issue as this past one; the differences being:
–instead of an optical drive being forcibly mounted to /live/boot-dev, now USB stuff is forcibly mounted to /live/iso-dev (the USB partition), and /live/iso-file (the mounted AntiX ISO itself). I do remember these /live mount points are described at the very end of the /live/README file mentioned earlier.
–unlike the optical drive case, neither iso-file nor iso-dev can be normally unmounted! Thus cannot freaking unplug USB stick!
Unmounting iso-dev from SpaceFM gives same error as if attempting to unmount /live/linux:
udevil: error 68: cannot stat '/live/iso-dev'
Unmounting iso-file:
udevil: error 55: cannot find '/live/iso-file' mounted in mtabHell, I have to use sudo umount from command line, and first unmount iso-file, then iso-dev; otherwise iso-dev complains that “target is busy”.
Some possibly useful additional info:
demo@antix1:~ $ lsblk # booted from CD NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT loop0 7:0 0 643.6M 1 loop /live/linux sda 8:0 0 223.6G 0 disk ├─sda1 8:1 0 529M 0 part ├─sda2 8:2 0 100M 0 part ├─sda3 8:3 0 16M 0 part └─sda4 8:4 0 223G 0 part sr0 11:0 1 1024M 0 rom sr1 11:1 1 678M 0 rom /live/boot-dev demo@antix1:~ $ demo@antix1:~ $ lsblk # booted from USB NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT loop0 7:0 0 678M 1 loop /live/iso-file loop1 7:1 0 643.6M 1 loop /live/linux sda 8:0 0 223.6G 0 disk ├─sda1 8:1 0 529M 0 part ├─sda2 8:2 0 100M 0 part ├─sda3 8:3 0 16M 0 part └─sda4 8:4 0 223G 0 part sdb 8:16 1 14.4G 0 disk ├─sdb1 8:17 1 1M 0 part ├─sdb2 8:18 1 50M 0 part /media/sdb2 └─sdb3 8:19 1 14.4G 0 part /live/iso-dev sr0 11:0 1 1024M 0 rom demo@antix1:~ $Relevant fstab part when booting from CD:
# Added by make-fstab /dev/sr0 /dev/sr0 /media/sr0 auto noauto,users,exec,ro 0 0 # Added by make-fstab /dev/sr1 /dev/sr1 /live/boot-dev auto noauto,users,exec,ro 0 0Relevant fstab part when booting from USB:
# Added by make-fstab /dev/sdb2 UUID=<two 4-digit hex> /media/sdb2 vfat noauto,uid=1000,gid=users,dmask=002,fmask=113,users 0 0 # Added by make-fstab /dev/sdb3 label=MULTIBOOT UUID=<two 4-digit hex> /live/iso-dev vfat noauto,uid=1000,gid=users,dmask=002,fmask=113 0 0 # Added by make-fstab /dev/sr0 /dev/sr0 /media/sr0 auto noauto,users,exec,ro 0 0Ok, sdb2 is actually not a problem at all, and I don’t attempt to unmount /live/linux, but, both /live/iso-file and /live/iso-dev are being used to mount USB drive’s stuff, so in the end I need admin user to simply unplug the drive, even when I’m using boot parameter “toram” to boot AntiX. Is all of this also expected? WTH?
Thanks beforehand.
