5 ms·

USB Boot of Multiple ISO Files by GRUB2 Boot Loader

75 points by transpute 3y ago

p1mrx 3y ago
> The linux command loads a Linux kernel from the specified path. casper/vmlinuz.efi is the linux kernel inside the Ubuntu ISO image. While this does seem useful, it's not really "booting an ISO" if you have to manually tell it what to execute.
freen 3y ago
Ventoy is a fantastic tool for this sort of thing: https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html
bheadmaster 3y ago
While this works, I find this method a bit tedious to use, at least compared to Ventoy [0]. Ventoy allows you to create a bootable USB containing any number of ISO files just by writing to a partition. It even supports Windows, and has some cool features like overriding Secure Boot on some machines. [0] https://www.ventoy.net/ https://www.ventoy.net/
- csdvrx 3y ago
  > While this works, I find this method a bit tedious to use, at least compared to Ventoy [0]. No, I find ventoy more tedious, because you can't use it as a standalone on your hard drive with a sane partitioning scheme. The only reason is because of how the ventoy detection hardcodes the partition boundaries in its checks, and it means Ventoy can only run with the partitions set in a way that may lead to alignment issues like write-amplification: I've detailed that in https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/issues/1342 https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/issues/1342 It used to be a warning - now it's a stopping error, causing the boot to hang. I don't like the boot to hang if the partition boundaries are changed. Ideally I'd have a 10G partition after the EFI (or it could even be the EFI itself) with a few ISOs for rescue purposes + a UEFI entry to avoid having to use a bootable USB: automatically booting the ISOs in case the normal UEFI entry has a problem is less tedious that having to find and plug a thumbdrive. I could give Ventoy its own partition wherever, but that's not possible unless I accept Ventoy hardcoded choices of partition boundaries: (pMBR->PartTbl[0].StartSectorId != 2048 || pMBR->PartTbl[1].SectorCount != 65536 || pMBR->PartTbl[1].StartSectorId != pMBR->PartTbl[0].StartSectorId + pMBR->PartTbl[0].SectorCount) If you don't accept this, and want to boot of multiple ISO files by a grub2 bootloader, whether from a thumbdrive or a hard drive, also check the old https://github.com/a1ive/grub2-filemanager https://github.com/a1ive/grub2-filemanager (now archived)
  - rgoulter 3y ago
    For just wanting to boot into a live iso.. with Ventoy, the setup is "grab a spare thumbdrive, and install ventoy to that", and adding more live ISOs is just copy pasting to USB mass storage. Compared to that, I think formatting another partition to install ventoy to (in the use case you're outlining), or updating a grub config with code like `loopback loop (hd0,5)`.. for me, these take more effort and care. Though, I'll keep the posted solution in mind if I'm ever wanting to boot from ISOs and I happen to not have a spare thumb drive around.
    - csdvrx 3y ago
      > Compared to that, I think formatting another partition to install ventoy to (in the use case you're outlining), or updating a grub config with code like `loopback loop (hd0,5)`.. for me, these take more effort and care. The other partition with the ISOs is not for when I plan to boot into a newer live ISO (which I would have to add to the partition etc): it's for when I don't plan to, or even want to!! The last time it helped me, I had made a configuration mistake on my laptop in an airport. "grab a spare thumbdrive, and install ventoy to that" would have been very painful, but rebooting and selecting from the UEFI grub2fm to then pick an ISO from which I could fix my mistakes was very easy (or at least, easier than the alternative!) However TBH I I hadn't had such a setup, I don't think I'd have taken the risk of doing some configuration and UKI tweaks at the airport while bored :)
- 3np 3y ago
  After trying various approaches, I settled on Glim. It's basically the same approach as TFA with the same just-mount-and-drop-an-ISO UX of Ventoy. https://github.com/thias/glim https://github.com/thias/glim You'll still have to go through basically the same excercise of the article if you want to boot another dist/iso than the ones it already recognizes.
  - csdvrx 3y ago
    > You'll still have to go through basically the same excercise There should be a way to automatize that, using Ventoy as a "database" of the recognized isos which could be fed to glim or anything else
- Heston 3y ago
  I've never been able to get Ventoy to boot a modern windows installation iso, otherwise it's a very handy tool
  - justin_oaks 3y ago
    I recently upgraded to using a faster USB stick for Ventoy. For some reason, Windows 10 wouldn't install from my newer, faster USB stick, but would install from my older, slower USB stick. I haven't yet figured out what the problem is. When booting the Windows ISO, the boot process would never progress past the screen showing the blue windows icon on a black background.
    - xprn 3y ago
      Windows uses some weird install process where it needs two partitions for the install media. Basically the whole installation is too big for FAT32 so IIRC the way to have it work is to split the ISO in two having the bootable part on one partition and a lot of the installation content on another. https://github.com/WoeUSB/WoeUSB https://github.com/WoeUSB/WoeUSB
    - Heston 3y ago
      I wonder if it's related to being a USB 2 stick rather than 3? Different drivers and perhaps UEFI handles it differently
  - RealStickman_ 3y ago
    Not sure when they added it, but there's a "wimboot" mode that works for Windows isos. Just used it last week without issue.
sowbug 3y ago
This is cool! While I love Ventoy as part of my toolbox, I might think about adding a GRUB-bootable rescue ISO as part of my Ansible system configuration, so that I don't actually have to go find my Ventoy USB drive when something goes sideways. Could be especially useful if I'm traveling with just a laptop.
- csdvrx 3y ago
  > I might think about adding a GRUB-bootable rescue ISO I do exactly what you describe with grub2-filemanager: I keep a NTFS partition on every drive, with a few ISO files: each can be >4G (unlike with a VFAT partition like the EFI partition) In case the UEFI boot fails, grub2-filemanager is the next entry in the boot order. Having everything inside an ISO is easier for maintenance. I often have Ubuntu LTS and the Windows install ISO: it contains a Windows PE that can be useful for rescue (chkdsk etc)
  - sowbug 3y ago
    Very nice. I hadn't thought of the dedicated partition, so thanks for the tip.
    - csdvrx 3y ago
      It has helped me so many times I now automatically provision at least 10G of every drive for a NTFS partition right after the EFI. 10G is small enough it won't be missed (even on the old 128G SSD I sometimes have to use) but big enough to hold 2 regular ISOs. I also leave inside a few basic scripts to add grub2-filemanager to the UEFI boot at the bottom of the list (after the regular UKIs) and a few static binaries for rescues. I'm now moving my binaries to cosmopolitan, mostly to make it easier to have their configuration file follow: cosmopolitan binaries have a /zip part where you can stuff say bashrc, which will be automatically used by the cosmopolitan bash if compiled with the right option to check /zip for config files. When I'm done, my "rescue" NTFS partitions should only contain a handful of files (mostly ISOs and cosmopolitan binaries)
      - 3y ago
bastard_op 3y ago
Clonezilla had a server feature like 15+ years ago that would setup a dhcp/pxe boot environment to bootstrap, fetch an iso, and launch into whatever inventory of linux installers you had like this example. Clonezilla was/is pretty dope, but haven't tried it in, well like 15+ years to see what came of it or what's supported these days. I was joking with my boss at the time after some windoze exploit of the week that I was going to boot that into vm on the network and start dropping workstations into pxe to load linux on everything finally. I'm sure after many acquisitions and security incidents later they still use windoze in all the wrong places.
- fishtacos 3y ago
  Windoze: 1.2 BILLION installs of Win 10 and nothing matching it. MS is doing something right.
  - Zetaphor 3y ago
    You're saying that as though many of those users were given a choice. Microsoft pays billions of dollars to make itself the default on new OEM machines. As well as providing free or heavily discounted licenses to school districts to ensure the next generation only knows about Windows. Those 1.2 billion installs are the result of aggressive (and at times legally dubious) business decisions, not 1.2 billion individual choices to install Windows.
    - Dalewyn 3y ago
      The vast majority of people use computers to Get Stuff Done(tm), they couldn't care less what's driving their computers. If Windows wasn't enabling them to Get Stuff Done(tm) they would be using some other operating system; and to some degree they are, I'm seeing more MacOS where they used to be Windows these days. Let's not forget the vast majority of people compute on iOS or Android now too, not Windows. The reason Linux (sans Android) continues to be a meme in the consumer space is not because Windows has aggressive marketing behind it.
  - Brian_K_White 3y ago
boomboomsubban 3y ago
Do any distros set this up automatically? I imagine if you asked most Linux desktop users "would you trade ~1GB of storage for a hassle free recovery option" they'd be for it.
- doubled112 3y ago
  systemd-rec-part coming soon to a system near you? More seriously though, I think so. Many users would do very well by having their home dir separate from the OS and an easy way to restore the OS. The Debian installer seems unable to pick up my LUKS/LVM/separate home partition setup it created, and this adds some friction when I want to reinstall.
- bunabhucan 3y ago
  What's the hassle of a cryptic grub prompt on a machine that might or might not have a screen or keyboard?
mmh0000 3y ago
A hardware solution to the same problem: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Y4FR9H7 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Y4FR9H7 This was given to me as a gift, I love it. Though, it's pricey enough I'm not sure I'd ever buy it for myself.
- lathiat 3y ago
  isostick also does this in hardware, $99: http://isostick.com/ http://isostick.com/
- Chouhada 3y ago
  Years ago, Zalman used to make something like this that you could put a 2.5" SATA disk in [1]. It was much cheaper, but you needed to add storage. I wish they still made them. I normally have spare disks around and it worked out much more cost effective. [1] -https://www.zalman.com/EN/Product/ProductDetail.do?productSeq=914dss https://www.zalman.com/EN/Product/ProductDetail.do?productSe...
  - kabism 3y ago
    tldr; they are the same thing Though they have their flaws, I've been an fan and advocate of these drives for a long time now. I got the Zalman-VE300 because it was the cheapest HDD enclosue available to me back then. It turned out an absolute gem that pleased me through about two years and countless OS installations at an IT Support gig. When the brittle jog-dial broke and I researched the thing, it turned out to have been a Zalman rebranded IODD-2531, to extend IODD's very limited market capability (korea, china, russia). So I got the successor IODD-2541 from russia. Later, I got a IODD-mini through the failed crowdfunding campaign. SSD, screen, physical enclosure were all lousy quality. About a year ago, I bought the ST300 on iodd.shop, surprised to find that they are still going on and still have no clue of design, yet are still producing and improving new products. Will buy whatever they come up with next. Even if they still put in the same shitty screen, or still manage to put the usb port at the wrong side of the case, or still fail to rotate the screen and keypad by 90 degrees :)
macshome 3y ago
The title needs to be corrected. The point of the article is how to boot from an ISO image without needing a USB drive.
chem83 3y ago
This is great. I’m on Ventoy, though, and in the process of setting up self-hosted http://netboot.xyz http://netboot.xyz
throw0101c 3y ago
See also UEFI drivers that can read a bunch of other file systems (btrfs, ext2/3/4, HFS, ISO, NTFS, UFS/FFS, XFS, ZFS, etc): * https://efi.akeo.ie https://efi.akeo.ie * https://github.com/pbatard/efifs https://github.com/pbatard/efifs The UEFI spec specifies (§13.3) that firmware is only required to read FAT32/16/12, which is generally why your /boot/efi is VFAT/FAT32. * https://uefi.org/specs/UEFI/2.10/ https://uefi.org/specs/UEFI/2.10/ * https://uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/UEFI_Spec_2_10_Aug29.pdf https://uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/UEFI_Spec_2_1...
snvzz 3y ago
Trigger warning: Website overrides browser scroll behavior.
m463 3y ago
I think this is interesting - maybe I will incorporate rescue images in my efi partition to recover or clone the system.

75 points by transpute 3y ago

> The linux command loads a Linux kernel from the specified path. casper/vmlinuz.efi is the linux kernel inside the Ubuntu ISO image. While this does seem useful, it's not really "booting an ISO" if you have to manually tell it what to execute.

freen 3y ago

Ventoy is a fantastic tool for this sort of thing: https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html

bheadmaster 3y ago

While this works, I find this method a bit tedious to use, at least compared to Ventoy [0]. Ventoy allows you to create a bootable USB containing any number of ISO files just by writing to a partition. It even supports Windows, and has some cool features like overriding Secure Boot on some machines. [0] https://www.ventoy.net/ https://www.ventoy.net/

csdvrx 3y ago
> While this works, I find this method a bit tedious to use, at least compared to Ventoy [0]. No, I find ventoy more tedious, because you can't use it as a standalone on your hard drive with a sane partitioning scheme. The only reason is because of how the ventoy detection hardcodes the partition boundaries in its checks, and it means Ventoy can only run with the partitions set in a way that may lead to alignment issues like write-amplification: I've detailed that in https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/issues/1342 https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/issues/1342 It used to be a warning - now it's a stopping error, causing the boot to hang. I don't like the boot to hang if the partition boundaries are changed. Ideally I'd have a 10G partition after the EFI (or it could even be the EFI itself) with a few ISOs for rescue purposes + a UEFI entry to avoid having to use a bootable USB: automatically booting the ISOs in case the normal UEFI entry has a problem is less tedious that having to find and plug a thumbdrive. I could give Ventoy its own partition wherever, but that's not possible unless I accept Ventoy hardcoded choices of partition boundaries: (pMBR->PartTbl[0].StartSectorId != 2048 || pMBR->PartTbl[1].SectorCount != 65536 || pMBR->PartTbl[1].StartSectorId != pMBR->PartTbl[0].StartSectorId + pMBR->PartTbl[0].SectorCount) If you don't accept this, and want to boot of multiple ISO files by a grub2 bootloader, whether from a thumbdrive or a hard drive, also check the old https://github.com/a1ive/grub2-filemanager https://github.com/a1ive/grub2-filemanager (now archived)
- rgoulter 3y ago
  For just wanting to boot into a live iso.. with Ventoy, the setup is "grab a spare thumbdrive, and install ventoy to that", and adding more live ISOs is just copy pasting to USB mass storage. Compared to that, I think formatting another partition to install ventoy to (in the use case you're outlining), or updating a grub config with code like `loopback loop (hd0,5)`.. for me, these take more effort and care. Though, I'll keep the posted solution in mind if I'm ever wanting to boot from ISOs and I happen to not have a spare thumb drive around.
  - csdvrx 3y ago
    > Compared to that, I think formatting another partition to install ventoy to (in the use case you're outlining), or updating a grub config with code like `loopback loop (hd0,5)`.. for me, these take more effort and care. The other partition with the ISOs is not for when I plan to boot into a newer live ISO (which I would have to add to the partition etc): it's for when I don't plan to, or even want to!! The last time it helped me, I had made a configuration mistake on my laptop in an airport. "grab a spare thumbdrive, and install ventoy to that" would have been very painful, but rebooting and selecting from the UEFI grub2fm to then pick an ISO from which I could fix my mistakes was very easy (or at least, easier than the alternative!) However TBH I I hadn't had such a setup, I don't think I'd have taken the risk of doing some configuration and UKI tweaks at the airport while bored :)
3np 3y ago
After trying various approaches, I settled on Glim. It's basically the same approach as TFA with the same just-mount-and-drop-an-ISO UX of Ventoy. https://github.com/thias/glim https://github.com/thias/glim You'll still have to go through basically the same excercise of the article if you want to boot another dist/iso than the ones it already recognizes.
- csdvrx 3y ago
  > You'll still have to go through basically the same excercise There should be a way to automatize that, using Ventoy as a "database" of the recognized isos which could be fed to glim or anything else
Heston 3y ago
I've never been able to get Ventoy to boot a modern windows installation iso, otherwise it's a very handy tool
- justin_oaks 3y ago
  I recently upgraded to using a faster USB stick for Ventoy. For some reason, Windows 10 wouldn't install from my newer, faster USB stick, but would install from my older, slower USB stick. I haven't yet figured out what the problem is. When booting the Windows ISO, the boot process would never progress past the screen showing the blue windows icon on a black background.
  - xprn 3y ago
    Windows uses some weird install process where it needs two partitions for the install media. Basically the whole installation is too big for FAT32 so IIRC the way to have it work is to split the ISO in two having the bootable part on one partition and a lot of the installation content on another. https://github.com/WoeUSB/WoeUSB https://github.com/WoeUSB/WoeUSB
  - Heston 3y ago
    I wonder if it's related to being a USB 2 stick rather than 3? Different drivers and perhaps UEFI handles it differently
- RealStickman_ 3y ago
  Not sure when they added it, but there's a "wimboot" mode that works for Windows isos. Just used it last week without issue.

sowbug 3y ago

This is cool! While I love Ventoy as part of my toolbox, I might think about adding a GRUB-bootable rescue ISO as part of my Ansible system configuration, so that I don't actually have to go find my Ventoy USB drive when something goes sideways. Could be especially useful if I'm traveling with just a laptop.

csdvrx 3y ago
> I might think about adding a GRUB-bootable rescue ISO I do exactly what you describe with grub2-filemanager: I keep a NTFS partition on every drive, with a few ISO files: each can be >4G (unlike with a VFAT partition like the EFI partition) In case the UEFI boot fails, grub2-filemanager is the next entry in the boot order. Having everything inside an ISO is easier for maintenance. I often have Ubuntu LTS and the Windows install ISO: it contains a Windows PE that can be useful for rescue (chkdsk etc)
- sowbug 3y ago
  Very nice. I hadn't thought of the dedicated partition, so thanks for the tip.
  - csdvrx 3y ago
    It has helped me so many times I now automatically provision at least 10G of every drive for a NTFS partition right after the EFI. 10G is small enough it won't be missed (even on the old 128G SSD I sometimes have to use) but big enough to hold 2 regular ISOs. I also leave inside a few basic scripts to add grub2-filemanager to the UEFI boot at the bottom of the list (after the regular UKIs) and a few static binaries for rescues. I'm now moving my binaries to cosmopolitan, mostly to make it easier to have their configuration file follow: cosmopolitan binaries have a /zip part where you can stuff say bashrc, which will be automatically used by the cosmopolitan bash if compiled with the right option to check /zip for config files. When I'm done, my "rescue" NTFS partitions should only contain a handful of files (mostly ISOs and cosmopolitan binaries)
    - 3y ago

bastard_op 3y ago

Clonezilla had a server feature like 15+ years ago that would setup a dhcp/pxe boot environment to bootstrap, fetch an iso, and launch into whatever inventory of linux installers you had like this example. Clonezilla was/is pretty dope, but haven't tried it in, well like 15+ years to see what came of it or what's supported these days. I was joking with my boss at the time after some windoze exploit of the week that I was going to boot that into vm on the network and start dropping workstations into pxe to load linux on everything finally. I'm sure after many acquisitions and security incidents later they still use windoze in all the wrong places.

fishtacos 3y ago
Windoze: 1.2 BILLION installs of Win 10 and nothing matching it. MS is doing something right.
- Zetaphor 3y ago
  You're saying that as though many of those users were given a choice. Microsoft pays billions of dollars to make itself the default on new OEM machines. As well as providing free or heavily discounted licenses to school districts to ensure the next generation only knows about Windows. Those 1.2 billion installs are the result of aggressive (and at times legally dubious) business decisions, not 1.2 billion individual choices to install Windows.
  - Dalewyn 3y ago
    The vast majority of people use computers to Get Stuff Done(tm), they couldn't care less what's driving their computers. If Windows wasn't enabling them to Get Stuff Done(tm) they would be using some other operating system; and to some degree they are, I'm seeing more MacOS where they used to be Windows these days. Let's not forget the vast majority of people compute on iOS or Android now too, not Windows. The reason Linux (sans Android) continues to be a meme in the consumer space is not because Windows has aggressive marketing behind it.
- Brian_K_White 3y ago

boomboomsubban 3y ago

Do any distros set this up automatically? I imagine if you asked most Linux desktop users "would you trade ~1GB of storage for a hassle free recovery option" they'd be for it.

doubled112 3y ago
systemd-rec-part coming soon to a system near you? More seriously though, I think so. Many users would do very well by having their home dir separate from the OS and an easy way to restore the OS. The Debian installer seems unable to pick up my LUKS/LVM/separate home partition setup it created, and this adds some friction when I want to reinstall.
bunabhucan 3y ago
What's the hassle of a cryptic grub prompt on a machine that might or might not have a screen or keyboard?

mmh0000 3y ago

A hardware solution to the same problem: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Y4FR9H7 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Y4FR9H7 This was given to me as a gift, I love it. Though, it's pricey enough I'm not sure I'd ever buy it for myself.

lathiat 3y ago
isostick also does this in hardware, $99: http://isostick.com/ http://isostick.com/
Chouhada 3y ago
Years ago, Zalman used to make something like this that you could put a 2.5" SATA disk in [1]. It was much cheaper, but you needed to add storage. I wish they still made them. I normally have spare disks around and it worked out much more cost effective. [1] -https://www.zalman.com/EN/Product/ProductDetail.do?productSeq=914dss https://www.zalman.com/EN/Product/ProductDetail.do?productSe...
- kabism 3y ago
  tldr; they are the same thing Though they have their flaws, I've been an fan and advocate of these drives for a long time now. I got the Zalman-VE300 because it was the cheapest HDD enclosue available to me back then. It turned out an absolute gem that pleased me through about two years and countless OS installations at an IT Support gig. When the brittle jog-dial broke and I researched the thing, it turned out to have been a Zalman rebranded IODD-2531, to extend IODD's very limited market capability (korea, china, russia). So I got the successor IODD-2541 from russia. Later, I got a IODD-mini through the failed crowdfunding campaign. SSD, screen, physical enclosure were all lousy quality. About a year ago, I bought the ST300 on iodd.shop, surprised to find that they are still going on and still have no clue of design, yet are still producing and improving new products. Will buy whatever they come up with next. Even if they still put in the same shitty screen, or still manage to put the usb port at the wrong side of the case, or still fail to rotate the screen and keypad by 90 degrees :)

macshome 3y ago

The title needs to be corrected. The point of the article is how to boot from an ISO image without needing a USB drive.

chem83 3y ago

This is great. I’m on Ventoy, though, and in the process of setting up self-hosted http://netboot.xyz http://netboot.xyz

throw0101c 3y ago

See also UEFI drivers that can read a bunch of other file systems (btrfs, ext2/3/4, HFS, ISO, NTFS, UFS/FFS, XFS, ZFS, etc): * https://efi.akeo.ie https://efi.akeo.ie * https://github.com/pbatard/efifs https://github.com/pbatard/efifs The UEFI spec specifies (§13.3) that firmware is only required to read FAT32/16/12, which is generally why your /boot/efi is VFAT/FAT32. * https://uefi.org/specs/UEFI/2.10/ https://uefi.org/specs/UEFI/2.10/ * https://uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/UEFI_Spec_2_10_Aug29.pdf https://uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/UEFI_Spec_2_1...

snvzz 3y ago

Trigger warning: Website overrides browser scroll behavior.

m463 3y ago

I think this is interesting - maybe I will incorporate rescue images in my efi partition to recover or clone the system.