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

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Lennart Sorensen <lsorense at csclub.uwaterloo.ca>

| On Sat, Sep 26, 2015 at 10:53:43AM -0400, William Park wrote:

| > How can I boot those multiple ISOs directly from one USB stick?

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

If you assume UEFI, can the problem be solved generically?

(I've not found UEFI firmware to be consistent about how one selects
what to boot.  See, for example, message 2 in
<https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkServer-Towers/help-with-TS140-bios-and-uefi/m-p/2176751>.)

| 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.

I've too often had troubles with booting from USB sticks that have
been prepared by these tools.  I've only partially understood those
problems (I've filed a few bug reports).

| 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.

I have found that creating bootable USB sticks from dd-ing .iso files
to work very well for those distros that intend it.

This mechanism doesn't allow you to store other goodies on the stick.

I would like to have a convenient place to store my customization
data: some packages I always install, some updates to avoid repeated
fetching from the internet, some public keys, etc.  Only the
unetbootin-like processes seem to support this.