Does anyone know of a reliable way to install Ubuntu on a USB disk?
(I don't mean Ubuntu Live, I'm talking about a full-fledged install which works on BIOSes that are picky about things like EFI).
Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility
111–120 of 208 posts
Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because the small percent of users that do need it serve many other Windows users. Seems sorta obvious that SOMEone needs the functionality.
People that have this need have the skill to install the required tool.
That's why we're here talking about Rufus. I'm not sure what you were getting at but thank you for demonstrating my point.
Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility
#113Well have to say Rufus is good. But there is a far better tool: Ventoy. You will only need to format your thumb drive once and for all. After that, you will simply only need to copy the image file such as .iso, .vhd etc on to the drive and you are all set. Check details from the following sites. https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy
UNetbootin has done this since 2007: https://unetbootin.github.io/ > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNetbootin > This is barely a year old and comes all, besides a handful of comments, from one account https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/graphs/contributors Personally and subjective this rings quite some alarm bells for me, seems just a bit sketchy and in any way really young, so not as much time out on the field and thu…
UNetbootin doesn't support multiple installs on the same device.
Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility
#114Well have to say Rufus is good. But there is a far better tool: Ventoy. You will only need to format your thumb drive once and for all. After that, you will simply only need to copy the image file such as .iso, .vhd etc on to the drive and you are all set. Check details from the following sites. https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy
UNetbootin has done this since 2007: https://unetbootin.github.io/ > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNetbootin > This is barely a year old and comes all, besides a handful of comments, from one account https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/graphs/contributors Personally and subjective this rings quite some alarm bells for me, seems just a bit sketchy and in any way really young, so not as much time out on the field and thu…
That doesn't look like it does the same thing at all.
I'm not sure why a piece of software being built by one person is sketchy but ok.
Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility
#115Well have to say Rufus is good. But there is a far better tool: Ventoy. You will only need to format your thumb drive once and for all. After that, you will simply only need to copy the image file such as .iso, .vhd etc on to the drive and you are all set. Check details from the following sites. https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy
UNetbootin has done this since 2007: https://unetbootin.github.io/ > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNetbootin > This is barely a year old and comes all, besides a handful of comments, from one account https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/graphs/contributors Personally and subjective this rings quite some alarm bells for me, seems just a bit sketchy and in any way really young, so not as much time out on the field and thu…
From wikipedia[1]:
> Multiple installs on the same device are not supported.
If one is limited to a single usb-stick per ISO, it's just easier to dd the installation image: run it the way it's (hopefully[x]) been tested by the vendors.
Ventoy is a different ballgame: drag & drop ISO file and boot from it. I tested it this morning with 3 things I carry around myself (debian-live, debian-installer, freebsd release installer), and it worked. 1 stick instead of 3, and I still have the remaining exFAT partition for other things. And a spare encrypted partition if I wanted to (I don't).
Regarding bugs -- it works or it doesn't for your distribution. I think it's remarkable what this, seemingly single developer, has achieved over a bit more than a year[2].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNetbootin
[2]: https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/commit/2090c6fa978999d4ef1e...
[x]: don't get me started with Intel SSD firmware "bootable" images.
Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility
#116Well have to say Rufus is good. But there is a far better tool: Ventoy. You will only need to format your thumb drive once and for all. After that, you will simply only need to copy the image file such as .iso, .vhd etc on to the drive and you are all set. Check details from the following sites. https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy
For the benefit of those who may not know, this has been possible (by way of Grub2) with many Linux distros for a while now without custom software. Typically you just add extra boot arguments that point to the iso and flag that booting from it is desired. Unfortunately the required arguments tend to be poorly documented and quite specific to each distro. This looks like a neat tool that's sidestepping that issue. If…
Are you referring to grub2iso[1]? If so, I was never able to make it work: either the ISO is too large (IIRC, in the old days it needed to load the full ISO to memory), or, if it did boot, the kernel wouldn't find the ISO ("virtual drive") itself.
I only got it to work with simple things that load fully from RAM -- say, debian-installer, which only requires kernel+initrd.
It has to be simple and reliable. If it's only one of them, I would rather carry an extra USB stick which I can always format (I do).
Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility
#117balena etcher is also nice and easy
https://www.balena.io/etcher/
Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility
#118Well have to say Rufus is good. But there is a far better tool: Ventoy. You will only need to format your thumb drive once and for all. After that, you will simply only need to copy the image file such as .iso, .vhd etc on to the drive and you are all set. Check details from the following sites. https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy
For the benefit of those who may not know, this has been possible (by way of Grub2) with many Linux distros for a while now without custom software. Typically you just add extra boot arguments that point to the iso and flag that booting from it is desired. Unfortunately the required arguments tend to be poorly documented and quite specific to each distro. This looks like a neat tool that's sidestepping that issue. If…
Assuming you loopback mount the ISO, I think these are the major args... fill in the "..." wherever you see them:
# Ubuntu
linux .../vmlinuz boot=casper file=.../ubuntu.seed iso-scan/filename=...
initrd ...
# Arch
linux .../vmlinuz img_dev=... img_loop=... earlymodules=loop
initrd ..._ucode.img .../archiso.img
# Kali
linux ... boot=live components findiso=... # noautomount
initrd ...
# GParted
linux ... boot=live union=overlay config components toram=....squashfs findiso=...
initrd ...
You'll also want to make sure you've insmod'ed any modules you need for your hardware as necessary (storage, USB, etc.)... unfortunately documentation on these is poor, and some modules are mutually exclusive, so have fun.
Best of luck getting a robust boot menu script going. Expect to spend weeks if not months on it if you're new to GRUB scripts/components.
Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility
#119Just used it today due to Microsoft removing their Windows USB utility. Lifesaver.
The Windows 10 downloader makes a bootable USB as an option. Certainly not useful for early versions of Windows, but works fine for W10.
I had a big problem with it last week when creating a 20H2 installation USB, it created a FAT32 disk instead of a NTFS disk.
Unfortunately install.wim on that image is bigger than the FAT32 max file size. Meaning that while the USB booted in the system, the installation was not possible.
Of course the installer doesn’t keep the disk image it downloads to make the usb, so it’s another 5-6G download to try again - this may be problematic for people on limited bandwidth connections.
Personally I just created an NTFS partition on my USB drive and copied the contents of another windows iso over to it.
Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the benefit of those who may not know, this has been possible (by way of Grub2) with many Linux distros for a while now without custom software. Typically you just add extra boot arguments that point to the iso and flag that booting from it is desired. Unfortunately the required arguments tend to be poorly documented and quite specific to each distro. This looks like a neat tool that's sidestepping that issue. If…
Are you referring to grub2iso[1]? If so, I was never able to make it work: either the ISO is too large (IIRC, in the old days it needed to load the full ISO to memory), or, if it did boot, the kernel wouldn't find the ISO ("virtual drive") itself. I only got it to work with simple things that load fully from RAM -- say, debian-installer, which only requires kernel+initrd. It has to be simple and reliable. If it's onl…
It was painful but I got Ubuntu ISO working with
loopback loop (hd0,gpt1)/PATH/TO/UBUNTU.iso
set root=(loop)
configfile /boot/grub/loopback.cfg
linux /casper/vmlinuz file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed iso-scan/filename=/PATH/TO/UBUNTU.iso
initrd /casper/initrd
You'll have to detect the disk though. It's possible to automate it somewhat, but not trivial (at least if you don't know how). You'll want to use search. https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub/html_node/sear...
And make sure you've insmod'ed any modules you need for your hardware if necessary (storage, USB, etc.)... unfortunately documentation on these is poor, and some modules are mutually exclusive, so have fun.