Ventoy

[Doug Laidlaw]

Nowadays, USB sticks are everywhere. They can be used for
copyright-protected documents, and most distros (including Windows)
support using them as installation media. There are even predictions
that USB sticks will make CD-drives obsolete. Over a few years, I have
collected quite a few.
Advantages: Small size; not scratchable like DVDs; no time wasted (and
no excessive HD wear) hunting around on the DVD looking for the next
step in the installation process.
Disadvantage: There is no convenient storage facility for them, allowing
for easy selection. I keep mine in a plastic box.

I had not heard of Ventoy (https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html)

until I saw it mentioned on a forum in a different context. It goes a
long way towards reducing that last disadvantage. Many Linux distros
are too big to fit on a CD, but don’t fill a DVD. At present, Mageia
(4.2 GB) and Knoppix) (about the same) are the biggest ones I have, and
some are CD-size The total is 11.9 GB. Ventoy allows them all (and an
.img file) to fit on one 32 GB USB stick, with room for more. Booting
from the stick, an alphabetical list of its contents is shown. Clicking
on the item “boots” from it, and it installs as if it were the only item
there. A few minutes ago, I successfully booted Mageia 8 from it. As
my confusion increases, it keeps them all in one place. If, unlike me,
you don’t keep many ISOs, you may not need it.

The software is free, and is installed on Partition1 of the stick. That
leaves at least 22 GB for storing ISOs. As always, YMMV!

Doug.

[marchugo]

Post by Doug Laidlaw
Nowadays, USB sticks are everywhere. They can be used for
copyright-protected documents, and most distros (including Windows)
support using them as installation media.  There are even predictions
that USB sticks will make CD-drives obsolete.  Over a few years, I have
collected quite a few.
Advantages: Small size; not scratchable like DVDs; no time wasted (and
no excessive HD wear) hunting around on the DVD looking for the next
step in the installation process.
Disadvantage: There is no convenient storage facility for them, allowing
for easy selection.  I keep mine in a plastic box.
I had not heard of Ventoy (https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html)
until I saw it mentioned on a forum in a different context.  It goes a
long way towards reducing that last disadvantage.  Many Linux distros
are too big to fit on a CD, but don’t fill a DVD.  At present, Mageia
(4.2 GB) and Knoppix) (about the same) are the biggest ones I have, and
some are CD-size  The total is 11.9 GB.  Ventoy allows them all (and an
.img file) to fit on one 32 GB USB stick, with room for more.  Booting
from the stick, an alphabetical list of its contents is shown.  Clicking
on the item “boots” from it, and it installs as if it were the only item
there.  A few minutes ago,  I successfully booted Mageia 8 from it.  As
my confusion increases, it keeps them all in one place.  If, unlike me,
you don’t keep many ISOs, you may not need it.
The software is free, and is installed on Partition1 of the stick.  That
leaves at least 22 GB for storing ISOs.  As always, YMMV!
Doug.

Even more usefull is that you can make the ISO's on a Ventoy stick
"persistent": all changes you make on a running live system can be
remembered on a special partition that you can add to the usb stick.

Things like individual names, users, even RPM update IIRW, are stored in
that special area of 1 or 2 gB. You have to define persistence
partitions for each of the ISO's you put on the USB stick.

Normally all these changes are lost, when you reboot the system.

I found a usefull article about persistence here:

https://www.linux.org/threads/usb-linux-boot-ventoy.29944/

and here:

https://linux.org/threads/multi-boot-full-install-to-a-usb.23563/

On a 64 gB usb stick you can store several ISO's together with their
persistence info.

Marc.

[Doug Laidlaw]

Post by marchugo

Post by Doug Laidlaw
Nowadays, USB sticks are everywhere. They can be used for
copyright-protected documents, and most distros (including Windows)
support using them as installation media.  There are even predictions
that USB sticks will make CD-drives obsolete.  Over a few years, I
have collected quite a few.
Advantages: Small size; not scratchable like DVDs; no time wasted (and
no excessive HD wear) hunting around on the DVD looking for the next
step in the installation process.
Disadvantage: There is no convenient storage facility for them,
allowing for easy selection.  I keep mine in a plastic box.
I had not heard of Ventoy (https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html)
until I saw it mentioned on a forum in a different context.  It goes a
long way towards reducing that last disadvantage.  Many Linux distros
are too big to fit on a CD, but don’t fill a DVD.  At present, Mageia
(4.2 GB) and Knoppix) (about the same) are the biggest ones I have,
and some are CD-size  The total is 11.9 GB.  Ventoy allows them all
(and an .img file) to fit on one 32 GB USB stick, with room for more.
Booting from the stick, an alphabetical list of its contents is
shown.  Clicking on the item “boots” from it, and it installs as if it
were the only item there.  A few minutes ago,  I successfully booted
Mageia 8 from it.  As my confusion increases, it keeps them all in one
place.  If, unlike me, you don’t keep many ISOs, you may not need it.
The software is free, and is installed on Partition1 of the stick.
That leaves at least 22 GB for storing ISOs.  As always, YMMV!
Doug.

Even more usefull is that you can make the ISO's on a Ventoy stick
"persistent": all changes you make on a running live system can be
remembered on a special partition that you can add to the usb stick.
Things like individual names, users, even RPM update IIRW, are stored in
that special area of 1 or 2 gB. You have to define persistence
partitions for each of the ISO's you put on the USB stick.
Normally all these changes are lost, when you reboot the system.
https://www.linux.org/threads/usb-linux-boot-ventoy.29944/
https://linux.org/threads/multi-boot-full-install-to-a-usb.23563/
On a 64 gB usb stick you can store several ISO's together with their
persistence info.
Marc.

Thanks,for the tips, Marc. I found the online documentation and Web
pages to be a bit light, and using a few acronyms that were beyond my
expertise. Apparently a 64 Gb stick needs to be formatted differently.

[marchugo]

Post by marchugo

Post by Doug Laidlaw
Nowadays, USB sticks are everywhere. They can be used for
copyright-protected documents, and most distros (including Windows)
support using them as installation media.  There are even predictions
that USB sticks will make CD-drives obsolete.  Over a few years, I
have collected quite a few.
Advantages: Small size; not scratchable like DVDs; no time wasted
(and no excessive HD wear) hunting around on the DVD looking for the
next step in the installation process.
Disadvantage: There is no convenient storage facility for them,
allowing for easy selection.  I keep mine in a plastic box.
I had not heard of Ventoy (https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html)
until I saw it mentioned on a forum in a different context.  It goes
a long way towards reducing that last disadvantage.  Many Linux
distros are too big to fit on a CD, but don’t fill a DVD.  At
present, Mageia (4.2 GB) and Knoppix) (about the same) are the
biggest ones I have, and some are CD-size  The total is 11.9 GB.
Ventoy allows them all (and an .img file) to fit on one 32 GB USB
stick, with room for more. Booting from the stick, an alphabetical
list of its contents is shown.  Clicking on the item “boots” from it,
and it installs as if it were the only item there.  A few minutes
ago,  I successfully booted Mageia 8 from it.  As my confusion
increases, it keeps them all in one place.  If, unlike me, you don’t
keep many ISOs, you may not need it.
The software is free, and is installed on Partition1 of the stick.
That leaves at least 22 GB for storing ISOs.  As always, YMMV!
Doug.

Even more usefull is that you can make the ISO's on a Ventoy stick
"persistent": all changes you make on a running live system can be
remembered on a special partition that you can add to the usb stick.
Things like individual names, users, even RPM update IIRW, are stored
in that special area of 1 or 2 gB. You have to define persistence
partitions for each of the ISO's you put on the USB stick.
Normally all these changes are lost, when you reboot the system.
https://www.linux.org/threads/usb-linux-boot-ventoy.29944/
https://linux.org/threads/multi-boot-full-install-to-a-usb.23563/
On a 64 gB usb stick you can store several ISO's together with their
persistence info.
Marc.

Thanks,for the tips, Marc.  I found the online documentation and Web
pages to be a bit light, and using a few acronyms that were beyond my
expertise.  Apparently a 64 Gb stick needs to be formatted differently.

On my EFI Mageia 64 bit system, I used this command to format and
partition my 64 GiB Sandisk Cruzer Fit USB stick:

[***@localhost ventoy-1.0.74]# sudo ./Ventoy2Disk.sh -I -i -g /dev/sdc

(be careful to select the correct USB device, all data will be lost)

That script produced the two partitions, a big one and a small one:

/dev/sdc1 : called Ventoy, 58.70 GiB, and automatically formatted in
exfat, with a flag called msftdata

and:

/dev/sdc2, called VTOYEFI, 32.00 MiB, Used size: 23.25 MiB, unused: 8,75
MiB, automatically formatted in fat16, at mount point:
/run/media/marc/VTOYEFI; with the flags: hidden, msftdata

As a test I copied a Mint Live ISO to the big Ventoy partition on the
USB stick. It ran flawlessly booting from the stick, but I couldn't get
persistence to work. All data that I fed into the Mint system (new
users, timezone) evaporates after a new booting.
I wasn't even prompted with the question if I would boot with or without
persistence.

2048+0 records in
2048+0 records out
2147483648 bytes (2,1 GB, 2,0 GiB) copied, 3,30469 s, 650 MB/s
mke2fs 1.45.6 (20-Mar-2020)
Creating filesystem with 524288 4k blocks and 131072 inodes
Filesystem UUID: c7d0dd76-2b9a-4330-91f8-1f1a373e90e2
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912
Allocating group tables: done
Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (16384 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

To my surprise, the default format for the persistence partition this
time is Ext4.

As persistence doesn't work, I apparently have to do some more learning
on how to give the right naming to the persistent-partition(s). Haven't
found more info on the net untill now. The Ventoy website isn't too
clear about these things.

Heads up: many acronyms in this to me new world, are beyond my expertise
too. Not too old to learn though...

BTW First try with formatting the USB stick gave strange results, I had
to reformat, and added the parameters -i and -g, to get a booting stick.
(-i for overwriting the stick again, and -g for making a GUID partition
table (GPT).

By default the Ventoy script formats the big partition as exfat (no idea
why, prob. for Windows use). You van reformat this exfat partition to
Ext4 later. I didn't, left it in exfat.

If I can find time, I will explore this Ventoy persistence solution,
which seems really nice for testing ISO's.

Marc.

[red floyd]

Post by Doug Laidlaw
Nowadays, USB sticks are everywhere. They can be used for
copyright-protected documents, and most distros (including Windows)
support using them as installation media.  There are even predictions
that USB sticks will make CD-drives obsolete.  Over a few years, I have
collected quite a few.
Advantages: Small size; not scratchable like DVDs; no time wasted (and
no excessive HD wear) hunting around on the DVD looking for the next
step in the installation process.
Disadvantage: There is no convenient storage facility for them, allowing
for easy selection.  I keep mine in a plastic box.
I had not heard of Ventoy (https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html)
until I saw it mentioned on a forum in a different context.  It goes a
long way towards reducing that last disadvantage.  Many Linux distros
are too big to fit on a CD, but don’t fill a DVD.  At present, Mageia
(4.2 GB) and Knoppix) (about the same) are the biggest ones I have, and
some are CD-size  The total is 11.9 GB.  Ventoy allows them all (and an
.img file) to fit on one 32 GB USB stick, with room for more.  Booting
from the stick, an alphabetical list of its contents is shown.  Clicking
on the item “boots” from it, and it installs as if it were the only item
there.  A few minutes ago,  I successfully booted Mageia 8 from it.  As
my confusion increases, it keeps them all in one place.  If, unlike me,
you don’t keep many ISOs, you may not need it.
The software is free, and is installed on Partition1 of the stick.  That
leaves at least 22 GB for storing ISOs.  As always, YMMV!
Doug.

Let me tell you, Ventoy saved my ass. After a BIOS update, my system
(Gigabyte Aorus Pro B550) no longer had the Mageia boot loader in its
BCD. So my only option was to boot from a Mageia install disk in rescue
mode. So far no problem, but...

Mageia 8 installer ISO is bigger than 4GiB, and I only could work from
Windows. Every method I tried to burn the ISO to either USB or DVD
failed because of file size truncation/wraparound.

Finally, I remembered this thread, and downloaded Ventoy to a 32GB USB
stick, copied the ISO onto the exfat partition, and booted that stick.
Hallelujah, it worked.

Thank you Ventoy.

I have no connection with Ventoy except as an extremely satisified user.

[red floyd]

[redacted]
Thank you Ventoy.
I have no connection with Ventoy except as an extremely satisified user.

And thank you Doug for posting the thread about Ventoy.

-- red floyd