Ventoy puts me into mountroot

vassia · 2026-09-07T03:49:57+0100

I have tried FreeBSD's memstick .img file on Ventoy and it always has the /dev/ufs/FreeBSD_Install device fail. Anyone know why this happens? I am using the latest Ventoy version (1.1.17)

richardtoohey2 · 2026-09-07T05:41:28+0100

Can't answer your question but to save a few necks:

Whattteva · 2026-09-07T05:49:01+0100

FreeBSD images have always been kind of hit or miss for me in Ventoy, especially GhostBSD ones. Just use it without Ventoy and it'll work fine.

metalmartijn · 2026-09-07T09:10:32+0100

Use the .ISO file in ventoy, not the memstick .img

vassia · 2026-09-07T13:10:47+0100

metalmartijn said:
Use the .ISO file in ventoy, not the memstick .img

I did that and it worked. Thank you! Why don't memstick .img files work well in Ventoy?

Alain De Vos · 2026-09-07T14:27:33+0100

a memstick image is not a dvd

Whattteva · 2026-09-07T14:36:02+0100

Alain De Vos said:
a memstick image is not a dvd

It isn't, but theoretically should be irrelevant because Ventoy is supposed to be able to boot either one of them. Or at leas, that is my experience in the case of Linux distros.

mer · 2026-09-07T14:57:13+0100

vassia said:
I did that and it worked. Thank you! Why don't memstick .img files work well in Ventoy?

I've not used Ventoy so all this is speculation.
if you do the file command on the memstick .img it looks like it has 2 partitions a DOS/MBR boot partition and a "data section".
same file command on an ISO tells you it 9660 CD-ROM filesystem data with a DOS/MBR boot sector.

Perhaps these differences are why. Ventoy sees the 9660 format, sees that it is bootable and starts grabbing what it needs after that. The memstick format, maybe Ventoy sees the 2 partitions and is just grabbing the first partition instead of partition 2.

I have no idea, just speculations. I've always just used dd to write the memstick image directly to the USB device.

victort · 2026-09-07T15:08:35+0100

For me the ISO files have never worked with ventoy.

Whattteva · 2026-09-07T15:09:09+0100

Ventoy is very nice to use since you can just use 1 USB stick for potentially all your images. Added a new iso/img is just a simple copy to the Ventoy partition. It really saves a lot of pain constantly dd'ing the stick especially cause most USB sticks are slow as snail to write to; or at least the cheap ones I like to use

mer · 2026-09-07T15:22:57+0100

but dd is native on freebsd

Whattteva · 2026-09-07T15:30:41+0100

mer said:
but dd is native on freebsd

I'm not sure how it has any relevance here. Ventoy is not some software that is running on top of FreeBSD or any OS for that matter. It's a boot loader kind of like GRUB. The comparison to dd doesn't make sense because dd isn't a boot loader and does not in any way interact with your BIOS/EFI the way Ventoy does.

Ventoy puts me into mountroot

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