So over the years (decade?) I’ve used Ventoy a lot. For those not aware, it is basically a live USB that you can add other ISOs to to boot into those. Usually overkill but incredibly useful for those days when you need diagnostics, a simple terminal, and then to install something what you actually want.
But… it feels like I run into corner cases and issues with ventoy more often than not. Proxmox or Fedora or whatever decide to do something even slightly different and then I need to upgrade ventoy and blah blah blah. Also… I am not the most comfortable with downloading anything from Sourceforge these days. Let alone something that is going to have a LOT of power over whatever machines I provision.
So I suspect the real answer is to either set up a way to network boot (although, not all machines support that) or buy like five cheap USB drives and put them on a keychain and not over-complicate things.
But if I DID want to over-complicate them… is there anything better than Ventoy these days?
Thanks
Take a look at the IODD ST400.
It’s a hardware solution to your problem: you put multiple isos on an ssd, plug your ssd into the ST400, then plug the ST400 into the computer you want to live boot from (through USB).
From the ST400 you can quickly swap the active ISO, and it acts like a virtual DVD drive to the target computer, and you’re basically ejecting and inserting a new DVD every time you do so.
You can also mount it for RW operations (ie. for inserting new ISOs without having to remove the SSD), for which it acts like a regular usb disk - but I recommend using it usually in RO mode to avoid data corruption.
It’s not that user friendly, but once you get used to it, it’s a perfect multiboot tool to have in your belt.
I have an older clone by zalman, and it’s meh. First of all, it only works with either fat32 or NTFS (although, I haven’t checked exfat), and you need to flash different firmware to change the compatible fs. Also, if the drive has multiple partitions, the last one becomes unmountable using this thingy (mismatch in real size and that advertised by the superblock, as far as I remember).
Can the newer models ext4 at least?
I have been using exfat since it has support for big ISOs and is compatible with Linux.
The ST400 does NOT support ext4, but I didn’t care much: I wanted a partition scheme that was accessible from both Windows and Linux.
I don’t recall ever having to change the firmware for that, nor for NTFS which I have used the very first time when testing it out.
For my use case, I am using a cheap 120G ssd on which I only keep ISOs, so I never found myself needing multiple partitions…
Edit: The documentation does say that it supports multiple partitions, but again, I never tested that out, so YMMV…
Hope this helps.
Also… I am not the most comfortable with downloading anything from Sourceforge these days.
Fair enough. You can download the iso from Github.
OOT, but why are people still using SF?
I think that’s just a link to the sourceforge.
You can try for yourself with wget or curl or your preferred download software :
You’re right, I must have gotten distracted by the Download Now button
Though I haven’t tried it, Yumi might be what you’re looking for.
I don’t think that addresses their issue with Ventoy, since this looks to just be a frontend over Ventoy. From the website you linked: “YUMI exFAT utilizes a bootloader based on Ventoy2Disk along with a custom YUMI theme and configuration enabling you to use advanced Ventoy boot methods with YUMI’s helpful front end.”
I tried to solve these cross-distro compatibility problems in a generic way with this “standard”, more years ago than I’d like to think about:
https://www.supergrubdisk.org/wiki/Loopback.cfg
If someone wants to come up with a bootloader agnostic solution rather than one tied to grub, like an extension to Bootloader spec , https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/BootLoaderSpec/ , I’d be happy to evangelize it and add support to grub for using it.
I’m not aware of any other bootloader that supports reading a config file that exists within an iso though, and secure boot support may add additional complications.
Bottom line:
I feel like we could relatively easily get to a point where every Live iso that actually supports loop booting can just be added, as a file, to your USB drive (from Windows, or your android phone even) and be detected at boot in a nice little menu, no editing of config files needed.
I don’t have the time or spoons to get the Linux community there alone, but if people are interested in helping I’m more than happy to pick this up again.
(Note: Please don’t blindly suggest “Just chain load the iso!” Things aren’t that easy, unfortunately).
Not sure if it fits what you’re looking for but I usually use YUMI for multi boot situations, can’t recall it giving me any issues over the years. But I don’t do anything overly complex either.
Never had the need to use Ventoy myself so can’t really give a good comparison but maybe others have used both & can give a better review.
PS - For what it’s worth my basic toolkit is YUMI with https://www.system-rescue.org and https://www.memtest.org, that alone covers the vast majority of my diagnostics/rescue situations. But I’ve also added Windows 10 ISO onto the multi boot on occasion which could be useful for getting to a Windows prompt with Windows tools when needed - though I have a habit of keeping Windows on its own USB via https://rufus.ie
If you want to overcomplicate things once, but then simplify everything after (within reason), take a look at netboot.xyz
Set up PXE on your network and never need to mess about imaging a stick again. Here’s a video thatll get you rolling. https://youtu.be/4btW5x_clpg
Here is the project on github https://github.com/netbootxyz/netboot.xyz
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/4btW5x_clpg
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
+1 for getting a small USB case and carrying multiples. Always works for me.
If you have some spare cash you can look at IODD or Zalman (white label iodd) devices. USB disk drives that also emulate an optical disk drive and mount ISOs.
I bought a Zalman back over a decade ago, still have and use it to this day. Used the daily in at data centres. Bees knees. Looking at the IODD devices now for the USBC port, but the Zalman is still working flawlessly.
It’s a common problem of all universal iso bootloaders. They make some kind of magic to boot images the way they are not supposed to. It breaks very often.
If you need a live system for diagnostics, simply install your favorite distro and tools that you use to a USB stick. And buy a second one for an installation image.
Secondary $5 USB stick. Or tertiary. Keep it simplified and have one ISO per stick, and have rest of the drive space empty. exFAT is a good filesystem.
Gut feeling: Nope.
Further reflection, for those who remember a certain video game in the CGA error (not V, C)
“Here’s tae us, who’s like us, damn few, and they’re all dead. “
It just freakin’ works, which is a real benefit in our world.
https://alternativeto.net/feature/create-multiboot-usb/ Maybe this will help?
