Multiple distros on a USB?

[JusTertii]

Hi all,

I've got a nice 32GB flash drive, and I'm wanting to use it to test-drive some more linux distros. It seems a waste to only be able to have one distro at a time -- does anyone know how I could have (say) 3 or 4 on there, and select which one to boot?

I'm thinking maybe partitioning could help, but I'm not really knowledgeable enough in that area to try. Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance,

JT

[macglenn]

What you are looking for is YUMI http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multi ... b-creator/
I just checked and to my surprise discovered they have a Linux version. I have only created versions previously in Windows. It allows multiple Live versions of Linux distros and utilities. My memory of the earlier versions is that only the first one will save settings. The others are like live CD's. You can run but not save settings etc.
macglenn

[viper37]

Hi all,

I've got a nice 32GB flash drive, and I'm wanting to use it to test-drive some more linux distros. It seems a waste to only be able to have one distro at a time -- does anyone know how I could have (say) 3 or 4 on there, and select which one to boot?

I'm thinking maybe partitioning could help, but I'm not really knowledgeable enough in that area to try. Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance,

JT

What you need is Sardu:
http://www.sarducd.it/

You can either automatically download the ISOs needed or place them inside the ISO directory and manually point to them.
It supports regulard Linux distros, Windows ISOs, anti-virus live-cd and lots of other utilities too.

There is a menu called "Extra" where you can manually add a Linux distro that wouldn't be listed by Sardu, and you can edit the menus accordingly.

Very easy to use and very quick to create the USB.

Only downside: I wasn't able to install Linux Mint from my Sardu disk, only to use the liveCD version of Mint.

[all41]

I use MultiSystem which is also referenced at pendrivelinux.com.
Here is one of my boot screens for an 8gb usb drive:

101_3744.png

It has the 4 64bit Mint 17.1, Maya 32bit, and Puppy-- plus it also
includes the Grub Disk and Grub Disk2, Plop boot, and other utilities.

[JusTertii]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll give it a whirl and let you all know how it goes.

[dawgdoc]

In the past I used a shell script titled MultiCD, which can also write the ISOs to a flash drive. However, there is no persistence.

The ISO images that MultiCD writes can also be written to a flash drive, although the filesystem will be read-only; see the ISOLINUX documentation for more info.

You can find the script and instructions at http://multicd.tuxfamily.org I have a feeling this would be more work than most would care for.

[austin.texas]

I second the suggestion by all41 - Multisystem is great.

How to create a usb that boots multiple .iso files using MultiSystem
How to create a USB which boots multiple .iso files using Grub2

[JusTertii]

Thanks for the excellent walk-throughs, austin.texas! The grub one is nowhere near as scarey as I'd thought

EDIT: Actually, there's something in your grub tutorial I don't understand, austin.texas.Could you clarify for me how you got

Code: Select all

menuentry "Mint 17 xfce 64bit iso" {
set isofile="/boot-isos/linuxmint-17-xfce-dvd-64bit.iso"
loopback loop (hd0,1)$isofile
linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=$isofile noprompt noeject toram
initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz
}
menuentry "Mint 17 MATE 32bit iso - this is just a title, edit any way you want" {
set isofile="/boot-isos/linuxmint-17-mate-dvd-32bit.iso"
loopback loop (hd0,1)$isofile
[highlight]linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=$isofile noprompt noeject toram[/highlight]
initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz
}
menuentry "pclinuxos64-kde-2014.05.iso" {
search --set -f "/boot-isos/pclinuxos64-kde-2014.05.iso"
loopback loop "/boot-isos/pclinuxos64-kde-2014.05.iso"
[highlight]linux (loop)/isolinux/vmlinuz fromusb root=UUID=68A7-EEB2 bootfromiso=/boot-isos/pclinuxos64-kde-2014.05.iso livecd=livecd apci=on splash=silent fstab=rw,noauto unionfs toram[/highlight]
initrd (loop)/isolinux/initrd.gz
}

So I'm absolutely bamboozled as to how you go the highlighted portions of the code. For example, in the pclinoxos64-kde, why do you have the root=uuid... part? Why is there casper for the one iso and not for the other? Did you find these settings on a forum somewhere, or did you just work them out?

Thanks again to everyone for all their help. I'm going to see if I can get austin.texas's idea working because I really like the idea of having an ext2 usb (as apparently it doesn't fall into the problems fat32 has). But, if I can't get it working, I'll go back to the other solutions.