- This topic has 35 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated Aug 14-4:55 am by BobC.
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BobC
I would like to be able to store, boot and run copies of my .iso files, with persistence files for them on a USB mounted Flashdrive, SSD, or Harddrive. I would like for the machine, when booted from the USB, to boot up to a menu, and be able to select or tweak boot codes and boot any of iso’s. This would mostly be for Linux distros’s as I avoid try to avoid using Windows. I was looking for a program to make this easy to do and manage.
I found multibootusb, which looks to be intended to do this for both Windows and Linux. It’s supposed to work for Debian and Ubuntu, and might work for others, and also is supposed to support persistence. I was able to download and install it’s 9.2.0 version from the .deb and ran it under root, and once I ran it correctly and installed a couple of distros, it started to boot up, and the menu came up Ok, but wasn’t able to boot either distro, antiX19.2 net, or pclinuxos kde. I then tried it with DWMX1.0 and Lbuntu19.10. DWMX offered persistence, but wouldn’t boot. Lbuntu offered persistence and actually works!
I found a post saying MX19 works, but didn’t try that.
I found a post saying they were having problems with antiX17, but got it working with antiX17.4
I found a post saying that the 9.3.0 version from git had a lot of bugs fixed, and I got it downloaded, but not installed.
I found a post saying that the version of syslinux included wasn’t up to date (I think it’s 6.03, vs 6.04 in antiX currently)
Maybe someone more technical could look the source to figure out why? The program looks to be done in python3.
The other programs I found to do this lacked open source, or wanted me to run it from wine, etc.
Debian also worked sometimes. Someone started a page with a list, but it looks like whoever was controlling the git site maintaining it hasn’t been updating anything at all for 8 months now, and was active 2 years ago. There are 14 contributors and 150 forks.
https://github.com/mbusb/multibootusb/wiki/Known-To-Be-Running-Images-List
I will update this post as I get more info and links initially
PS: instead of installing the 9.2.0 .deb package, I tried installing 9.3.0 from git. The install went fine, but I had less success, now getting install_syslinux() failed. I tried it with both the syslinux6 that came from git as well as copying/renaming /usr/bin/syslinux as suggested in a post on git and both led to the same result. I aso noticed that antiX17.4 persistence was not recognized.
Maybe that’s why 9.3.0 has never been released. It looks like the 9.3.0 bug fixes were intended mostly for windows.
PSS: I’ve come to the conclusion that syslinux is not intended for people to use directly. I thought about using the 9.2.0 version to install the iso’s, because it did at least create the menu for the iso’s to boot from, but didn’t find a reasonable way to even get syslinux installed correctly on the USB to be able to try that.
- This topic was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by BobC.
- This topic was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by BobC.
- This topic was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by BobC.
Xecure
For multibooting I have used a windows tool named easy2boot. In their website the have a list of all the distros that work and how to set them up. It is very complicated.
For antiX, the way I started testing it before giving it the full USB was using E2B. I used the tool that lets me create an fat32 image (of 4GB) from the iso and I sued it for persistence until I learnt how things worked. With a whole USB I was able to do many more things that the 4GB limit.It still works for me on my USB HDD, though I only use it when I don’t want to burn another USB stick. It has worked for me with windows, and all linux distros I tested. The only limitation is that I need windows to use it.
When building the fat32 image files (that later become fat32 partitions), the program always asks to select a syslinux version and syslinux 6 always works for me, so your issues can only be related to multibootusb.I recently read that YUMi finally has support for UEFI booting, so you could see if you can set persistence with it if you cannot get MultBootUSB to work.
antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.I saw easy2boot, but it isn’t open source, and the free Linux version was said to be very limited, so I didn’t put effort into it. I spent 10 or 12 hours trying the permutations on MultiBootUSB. There were many tries on multiple machines. At my home, most PC’s are Linux, and I avoid using my Windows work PC because the company is very anti-Linux, but it isn’t something they will ever change.
I will give YUMi a try. Thanks for responding.
rokytnji
I
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used
to read exton linux blog on usb systems he used to build.
Sometimes I drive a crooked road to get my mind straight.
Not all who Wander are Lost.
I'm not outa place. I'm from outer space.Linux Registered User # 475019
How to Search for AntiX solutions to your problemsPDP-8
Try VENTOY (Windows, Linux – gpl3)
https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html
I had the same issues, and then found Ventoy. Out of the box I was able to multiboot antiX and MXlinux 19.2 on my uefi-only boxes without any problems. Some other distros were hit or miss.
Interesting concept – you “install” Ventoy to the stick. Then all you have to do is put ISO’s on that stick. Ventoy figures out the rest without creating a spaghetti-mess of files on the stick – it’s just booting isos directly.
As such, I treat all multibooters as “live-media” convenience, and either do a frugal install, or do what antiX does best – awesome user-definable persistence.
As with all 3rd party booters, one needs to be careful which way to point fingers if something goes wrong. Not fair to blame the antiX (or other distro) devs for instance if something goes pear-shaped in the process.
I don’t know how many distro devs will want to abide by being “Ventoy compatible” as described in their docs.
I haven’t tested all the corner cases, and only did a quick run with antiX and MXlinux, but so far so good.
- This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by PDP-8.
I am looking at that and will give it a try, thanks 🙂
It seemed to install correctly, but was very funky. It keeps mounting and dismounting the drive, and I was able to mount it manually, and copy iso files to it, but when it boots, it says there are none there. If I can get it mounted, they appear to be there, but there is something very wrong with the mounting/dismounting.
I will try again on a completely stock system.
There was no .deb, so I might think its installed right, but maybe it isn’t? I looked at trying to do an install from source and that looked impossible for me.
I got it to work by installing and running the program under Debian.
I think SpaceFM and antiX automounting were having problems with it. I still need to retry on a stock antiX system to verify, and try a few more .iso’s, and persistence.
Ah, yes – be sure to disable drive auto-mounting or it will get confused half-way through the process as antiX mounts it half-way through the process. 🙂
I took the long way around – went into antiX control center, disabled auto-mounting of external devices / usb devices, and rebooted.
Then performed the Ventoy install to the target drive. Now it finished properly.
Returned to the antiX control-center, and re-enabled automounting since I prefer that for a desktop.
Really nice that one can reformat the primary Ventoy partition where you lay the isos on to be anything you like, not just the default exFAT. Or use commandline switches for gpt vs mbr.
I’m liking it so far..
The key I think was to turn off automount and reboot, not be running SpaceFM, and reformat to not EXFAT after it was created, BEFORE loading the .iso files.
I haven’t figured out persistence yet.
It would be cool to have each .iso in it’s own directory, and that way any associated files it would need could be there with it. But then again, I have to see. Maybe that won’t be an issue.
I am using this with a 256 gb fast SSD on a USB 3.0 mount. It’s quick enough to use for testing how to do simpler things on a USB 3.0 capable PC.
I’m still having problems formatting and loading.
1. I’m having problems writing the .iso’s to the drive. It seems to fail and unmount. I’m not sure where to look for error messages for clues. I have tried SpaceFm, ROXFiler, and XFE. I tried the EXFAT default, XFS, Ext4 and Ext2. Right now I’m trying NTFS, but had the same problem writing to it as the others.
2. Mounting is trouble. I would like to be able to mount it the same each time. I wish I could get it to mount at the same place and would work reliably to copy the .iso files to it.
Once I get it working, I’ll do more testing booting and running from it.
So, how did you get it working? What is your setup?
Not sure why it was dismounting while trying to copy .iso files to it. I created a folder /media/ventoy and added the SSD drive to my fstab.
I was able to boot and run a couple of the distros, but haven’t tried persistence yet.
Hmm. lots of variables so hard to diagnose from this distance..
Good stick right? Maybe blast it clean with gparted with a default filesystem for the whole stick and try again. (Tip – even if you don’t like Windows, the Rufus utility just by itself when using the “non bootable” filesystem option, has shown to me one of the greats in detecting true drive capacity and blasting out crud from sticks that have seen a lot of bad road…)
Sure, go ahead and use a filesystem structure of your iso’s. What I’d probably NOT do, is make a directory called ventoy on your own, just to avoid any confusion to ventoy itself. 🙂
No automount when using the ventoy install script. Covered.
After install, take a look at the stick with gparted. You’ll see one HUGE partition, that has no label, and is exFAT. The secondary partition at the end of the stick IS labeled “Ventoy”. OK.
The trick here is not to get excited about the secondary partition and try to put iso’s into the “Ventoy” partition. It’s the first one you want to slam iso’s into, and that one has no label. Thus, in a file manager, it would probably show up as generic, like /dev/sdX1 (where X is a/b/c/d whatever)
Then again, depending on distro you are building it on, it may show up in /media rather than the canonical /mnt …..
Repartitioning – one thing I did try just to prove a point, was that immediately after building the Ventoy stick, it was super easy to just let gparted reformat that huge 1st un-labeled partion from exFAT to ext3/4. FAT32 worked fine. In addition to isos, sure, use this partition for persistence too.
I suppose worst case, you could build it on the Windows gui utility, and that brought up antiX and MXlinux fine too.
I’d also maybe prove this all with a usb-stick first, rather than use your SSD just to cut out that possible variable.
Just some thoughts…
Yes, the SSD is a top shelf 250 GB unit from Crucial, and the USB 3.0 mount and cable was expensive and LOOKS well built, but I guess that is suspect.
Yes, Rufus is a good program, but I really hate having to deal with Windows and all the reboots. I still have working copies on 2 machines, but I hate messing with it. I wonder if Rufus would run under Wine or something?
Yes, I do have actual normal flash drives and hard drives, too.
Since I seem to be doing ok now, maybe I’ll just use it.
If I try anything it will be to start with a stock antix release and normal hard drive in a normal USB 3.0 mount, and if that doesn’t work try a normal usb 3.0 flashdrive, but don’t have any real big ones. I could/ try it just to see if any of these permutations have no problems.
Brian Masinick
Regarding the use of Rufus or some other tool that runs either primarily or exclusively on some proprietary OS:
I NEVER use such a tool. 100% of the time, a SUPER powerful (and equally DANGEROUS tool if not used properly), the dd command is more than able to clean, reset, and install software. You can put ZEROs on a device, random sequences, or ISO images on a device, ranging from some ancient tape device, to a modern disk drive, removable USB device.
Moreover, both antiX and MX Linux each have a powerful USB tool, actually a set of tools. I recommend using them, either from the USB device itself, or from a running system (either installed on disk or removable USB). There are Format USB and Live USB Maker tools, plus the command line dd tool available. Read about them and examine them. If you have a spare USB device and an environment where you can experiment (and back up resources available), get to know all of these tools and do not be afraid to use them. Feel free to ask more questions.
I haven’t really done much with multi-boot from USB devices, but the point remains – dd is able to append information with the right choice of arguments – for instance the output redirection >> will APPEND, while > will only overwrite whatever device is specified with the of= argument.
https://www.linuxbabe.com/apps/create-multiboot-usb-linux-windows-iso has some useful information and the tools discussed do seem to be helpful.
In the long run I’d rather know the format, technique and use lower level tools myself; then I’m certain to understand it.
dd will do the job; what I do not know for certain is whether there are headers or indexing information required to identify each multiple image or if the system itself will (as expected) locate each image as long as they are appended (not overwritten) each time you add to an existing media source. My fundamental belief is that if you append them properly they should work.- This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by Brian Masinick.
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Brian Masinick
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