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

[Christopher Browne]

On 26 September 2015 at 10:53, William Park <opengeometry at yahoo.ca> 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.


It's an interesting idea, but I don't expect it's nearly possible.  And not
because it is forcibly infeasible...

The various Linux distribution projects need to define "boot disks" to
enable installing Their Thing.  In practice, they often have multiple
choices that they need to offer their users, hence you commonly have such
options as...
  - Install [Flavor of] Linux
  - Run recovery disk to clean up [Flavor of] Linux
  - Perhaps an "advanced" console

They therefore define some sort of dispatcher for their respective set of
choices.

It would certainly be *plausible* to have that dispatcher take on a larger
set of options, hence to pick those actions for a larger set of flavours of
Linux.

However, that would require cooperation between groups that are accustomed
to not needing to have tight interactions.  (e.g. - gotta have Debian guys
working with Fedora guys for a single 'logical disk' definition that would
do all their respective things)

Frankly, little USB sticks are sufficiently small and cheap that I'd be
happy having a sheaf of them on a cord.

Curiously, I have stopped doing this sort of thing lately; I find PXE
booting easier to set up for the infrequent cases where I need to do so.
When I built my last box <http://linuxfinances.info/info/steele.html> last
year, I ran into problems trying to boot off a CD/DVD, and found PXE easy
enough to configure that I'd be inclined to do that next time.  That
doesn't require having a USB stick at all!  :-)
--
When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the
question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
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