Tool/ways to burn multiple bootable images to same usb stick

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I was using a multiboot system earlier with drag and drop functionality on linux - but unfortunately it doesn't seem to work anymore.

Are there tools which allow you to burn multiple iso/images onto the same USB stick and give you the option to boot from a selected image ?

Command line options to do it are fine, but good to know of drag and drop tools that make life easier in a hurry.
 
Hi,

I never used it but there is this one called Ventoy:

Ventoy

Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO files. With ventoy, you don't need to format the disk again and again, you just need to copy the iso file to the USB drive and boot it.
www.ventoy.net www.ventoy.net

I can't tell you if it's good or not but from what I read on internet lot of people are happy about it, so may be it worth a try. Plus it looks like it is also support BSD iso.
 
gotnull said:
Hi,

I never used it but there is this one called Ventoy:

Ventoy

Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO files. With ventoy, you don't need to format the disk again and again, you just need to copy the iso file to the USB drive and boot it.
www.ventoy.net www.ventoy.net

I can't tell you if it's good or not but from what I read on internet lot of people are happy about it, so may be it worth a try. Plus it looks like it is also support BSD iso.
Click to expand...
I use it for years, the only OS that I cannot use it with is OBSD.
For a time I had a 64gb thumb drive with more then 10 isos at the same time. But this was a long time ago during the horrible phase of distro hopping. Today I use it with just 3 isos.

To use FreeBSD to manage the Ventoy you need to configure FUSE.
 
gotnull said:
I never used it but there is this one called Ventoy:

I can't tell you if it's good or not but from what I read on internet lot of people are happy about it, so may be it worth a try. Plus it looks like it is also support BSD iso.
Click to expand...

The latest version, just this week, adds support for 14-CURRENT. It's supported earlier releases for ages.

Very active development and thorough docs.

However you do still need to create the Ventoy stick from a windows or linux box.

After that you can manage the ISO or bootable image files from any OS that can write to an exFat partition, including FreeBSD with the exfat-fuse filesystem loaded.

BobSlacker said:
I use it for years, the only OS that I cannot use it with is OBSD.
For a time I had a 64gb thumb drive with more then 10 isos at the same time. But this was a long time ago during the horrible phase of distro hopping. Today I use it with just 3 isos.
Click to expand...

I first needed it to run a DOS-based BIOS updater for an older Thinkpad. Works well.

BobSlacker said:
To use FreeBSD to manage the Ventoy you need to configure FUSE.
Click to expand...

# pkg install fusefs-exfat exfat-utils
 
BobSlacker said:
I use it for years, the only OS that I cannot use it with is OBSD.
Click to expand...
It's good to know that, thank you.

smithi said:
The latest version, just this week, adds support for 14-CURRENT. It's supported earlier releases for ages.

Very active development and thorough docs.

However you do still need to create the Ventoy stick from a windows or linux box.

After that you can manage the ISO or bootable image files from any OS that can write to an exFat partition, including FreeBSD with the exfat-fuse filesystem loaded.
Click to expand...
Thank you for the explanation, it looks like a good project.

Back in the day, I was using Glim, these days I use only one OS per USB stick, but if I need to use a multiboot stick I think I'll give Ventoy a try.
 
Shouldn't the Drive be '/dev/da0' ?

Something I don't get here.... How is the USB stick initially partitioned and formatted? I don't understand how inetbootin initialises a new USB device...
 
balanga said:
Shouldn't the Drive be '/dev/da0' ?
Click to expand...
This is a MBR partition. /dev/da0 is a raw category for usb partitions. Each usb has a slice name like: da0s1, da0s2, ... I mounted a usb and it's named da0s1.

balanga said:
I don't understand how inetbootin initialises a new USB device...
Click to expand...
You have to mount your usb, until you don't do this, unetbootin will not recognize your usb device.

balanga said:
How is the USB stick initially partitioned and formatted?
Click to expand...
Show your usb devices:
$ ls /dev/da*

If you see something like /dev/da0s1 mount it:
# mount_msdosfs /dev/da0s1 /media

You can use Automounting Removable Media for easy setup too.
 
hbsd said:
Show your usb devices:
$ ls /dev/da*

If you see something like /dev/da0s1 mount it:
# mount_msdosfs /dev/da0s1 /media
Click to expand...

That's all well explained, but

hbsd said:
You can use Automounting Removable Media for easy setup too.
Click to expand...

I'd recommend that balanga uses the manual method you've described, and also becomes thoroughly familiar with the first part of section 19.4 first, before resorting to automounting USB media.

In some cases "there be dragons" with automounting that knowing what's going on 'under the hood' may suggest manual mounting as a more suitable choice.
 
Many thanks for the pointer to Automounting Removable Media. I'm embarrassed to say that I've never used it before, but it does make life a lot easier.

As far as sysutils/unetbootin goes, how do you go about creating a multi-os USB stick from scratch? If I have a 64GB stick, where do I start? GPT or MBR? How to partition/format.

I did successfully create a bootable disk, but I'm not really sure how, and can't seem to do it again :(
 
balanga said:
As far as sysutils/unetbootin goes, how do you go about creating a multi-os USB stick from scratch? If I have a 64GB stick, where do I start? GPT or MBR? How to partition/format.
Click to expand...

unetbootin seems to want an msdosfs filesystem on USB, eg da0s1 which is MBR scheme. That's how USB sticks come preformatted.

msdosfs partitions can't be larger than 32GiB, with a 4GiB filesize limit, so you couldn't use it for FreeBSD dvd1 images which are >4G.

Ventoy, by default, formats the data slice as exFAT which has no such limits on partition or file sizes.

You need to download the windows or linux installer to run on those platforms to create the Ventoy USB stick. I had a Win10 system handy (dual boot).

Then you can install .ISO, .img etc files from FreeBSD or any system, on any sized USB stick.

You'll need to install pkgs fusefs-exfat and exfat-utils for exfat write, read & fsck.

https://www.ventoy.net/
 
With EFI you could also just put the contents of various images into different folders and use the built-in EFI console to navigate the folders and boot.
Putting something like rEFInd on that stick might also work; never tried that. EFI console always was sufficient when I really needed such a 'multiboot'-drive.
 
I've never made any progress using the EFI console. I've tried but failed miserably. Could do with a good guide. Where startup.nsh is read from or how to create one remains a mystery to me.
 
smithi said:
The latest version, just this week, adds support for 14-CURRENT. It's supported earlier releases for ages.

Very active development and thorough docs.

However you do still need to create the Ventoy stick from a windows or linux box.

After that you can manage the ISO or bootable image files from any OS that can write to an exFat partition, including FreeBSD with the exfat-fuse filesystem loaded.



I first needed it to run a DOS-based BIOS updater for an older Thinkpad. Works well.



# pkg install fusefs-exfat exfat-utils
Click to expand...
Ventoy looks like the sort of app I've been waiting for for a long time. I've managed to boot a number of Linux distros without any problem...

Just tried FreeBSD-13.1-RELEASE-amd64-bootonly.iso but get an error when trying to load it...

NGINX: 
No bootfile found for UEFI!
Maybe the image does not support IA32 UEFI!
 
balanga said:
Ventoy looks like the sort of app I've been waiting for for a long time. I've managed to boot a number of Linux distros without any problem...

Just tried FreeBSD-13.1-RELEASE-amd64-bootonly.iso but get an error when trying to load it...

NGINX: 
No bootfile found for UEFI!
Maybe the image does not support IA32 UEFI!
Click to expand...
Just noticed that someone had a similar problem.....Thread 73128
 
smithi said:
... where it was said:



It's not clear from your posts above whether you've tried installing from Ventoy yet?
Click to expand...
Not sure if this is addressed to me, but in #19 I said I've tried it and have managed to boot a number of Linux distros without any problem...
 
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