[GTALUG] question -- how to boot from USB with multiple ISOs?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Sat, Sep 26, 2015 at 10:53:43AM -0400, William Park wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Right now, I'm carrying around 2 USB sticks,
>     - one 32GB -- it boots Linux and contains about 10 bootable ISOs.
>     - one 8GB -- to 'dd' the real ISO that I want to boot.
> 
> It's 2-step process, and it's ok.  But, I would like to reduce it to
> 1-step.
> 
> How can I boot those multiple ISOs directly from one USB stick?
> 
> Eg. if you want to boot Fedora/Ubuntu/Clonezilla, what do you do?  I
> guess you can carry around 3x8GB USB sticks,
>     http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=11_180_632&item_id=073667
> but 1x32GB USB stick,
>     http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=11_180_181&item_id=058767
> is better, I think.

As a generic option, the answer is that you can't do it.

There are things like unetbootin which knows various installers and ISO
images and knows what changes to make to the boot procedure for each
one to fake it and let it work.  But it is not generic.

And the dd of one ISO also only works in the case that it is actually
and image capable of working from USB instead of a CD/DVD, which is
certainly true for many these days but is also not generic.

Something like this would be a generic solition:
http://isostick.com/

It actually DOES emulate a USB DVD drive with the iso image.

-- 
Len Sorensen