diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | content/blog/multi-distro-usb.md | 51 |
1 files changed, 26 insertions, 25 deletions
diff --git a/content/blog/multi-distro-usb.md b/content/blog/multi-distro-usb.md index 58eb23a..6993870 100644 --- a/content/blog/multi-distro-usb.md +++ b/content/blog/multi-distro-usb.md @@ -4,35 +4,35 @@ date: 2024-09-02 draft: false --- -I often found myself needing to create a bootable USB stick with some Linux distro, -either to install and try it, or to use it live for specific purpose, -like using [Tails][1] Linux to generate/restore a PGP key and install it on the smart card, -or using [ParrotSec][2] for testing or [HTB][3] challenges. +I have often found myself needing to create a bootable USB stick with some Linux distro, +either to install and try it, or to use it live for a specific purpose. +Like using [Tails][1] Linux to generate or restore a PGP key and install it on the smart card, +or using [ParrotSec][2] for testing or [HTB][3]/[OTW][9] challenges. -I know it was possible to create a hard drive with multiple OS in different partitions, so -I thought, it has to be possible to do the same thing using a USB drive. +I knew it was possible to create a hard drive with multiple OS in different partitions, so +I thought it had to be possible to do the same thing using a USB drive. -# How to create multi-distro bootable Linux stick -Unless you are into [GRUB][8], and want to learn more about it and feel more comfortable fixing GRUB issues by yourself. +# How to create a multi-distro bootable Linux stick +Unless you are into [GRUB][8] and want to learn more about it and feel more comfortable fixing GRUB issues by yourself, ## Don't. -After spending days, looking into the grub configurations for running Rocky Linux and Proxmox (to no avail). -I'm going to save you some deep rabbit hole dive. +After spending days looking into the grub configurations for running Rocky Linux and Proxmox (to no avail), +I'm going to save you a deep rabbit hole dive. -**Short answer**, if you will only work with images less than 4GB, then it _can*_ work, but -if you are going to work with bigger images that you need live (Parrot Security 6+GB) it won't work. +**Short answer**, if you will only work with images less than 4GB, then it _can_(*) work, but +if you are going to work with bigger images that you need live (Parrot Security 6+GB), it won't work. **Long answer**, I didn't find a lot of info online on how to create a multi-partition multi-boot USB stick, -with the `efi` "boot" partition formatted as `fat32` and the "data/iso" partition formatted to anything else. +with the `efi` "boot" partition formatted as `fat32` and the "data/iso" partition formatted as anything else. -Tools like [glim][5] (which is amazing btw), and [uGRUB][6] only work with a single `fat32` partition. +Tools like [glim][5] and [uGRUB][6] only work with a single `fat32` partition. -Tutorials like [this][4] (which is amazing btw and mentioning how to work with multi-partition USB sticks, -including with `ext4`), works too. **But never stable enough**. +Tutorials like [this][4] -which is amazing btw and explains in details how to work with multi-partition USB sticks, +including with `ext4`- work too, **But never stable enough**. -I have seen the same setup randomly failing while being used in live mode. I have seen the same image work on -**only** one of my machines (the old one that have HDD) and fails on the others machines. +I have seen the same setup randomly failing while being used in live mode. I have seen the same image works on +**only one** of my machines (the old one that has an HDD) and fails on the others machines. To quote the documentation: > If you have any problem to boot, for instance stuck at the GRUB prompt before the menu, @@ -43,12 +43,12 @@ To quote the documentation: [Glim][7] ## Why? -At this point, I can't tell you why an image would work or not. I can't tell you how to boot Rocky Linux, or what is -the required parameters to run proxmox linux. +At this point, I can't tell you why an image would work or not. I can't tell you how to boot Rocky Linux or what +the required parameters to run Proxmox Linux are. -All I can tell you, is that it took me way too long to figure out, that it's not stable enough to run reliably. -There might be a reason why it fails on the machine with the SSD, and why it couldn't insert `thinkpad_acpi' module, -but for the original purpose of having a convinient way of setting up linux and updating images, +All I can tell you is that it took me way too long to figure out that it's not stable enough to run reliably. +There might be a reason why it fails on the machine with the SSD or why it couldn't insert the `thinkpad_acpi` module, +but for the original purpose of having a convenient way of setting up Linux and updating images, I will stick with having to run ```bash $ diskutil list @@ -56,13 +56,14 @@ $ diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ Untitled /dev/diskX $ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskX $ sudo dd bs=4M if=path/to/image.iso of=/dev/diskX status=progress oflag=sync ``` -and waiting for few minutes, for now. +and waiting for a few minutes, for now. [1]: https://tails.net/ [2]: https://parrotsec.org/ -[3]: https://www.hackthebox.com/ +[3]: https://git.sr.ht/~a14m/HTB [4]: https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-create-multiboot-usb-with-linux [5]: https://github.com/thias/glim [6]: https://github.com/adi1090x/uGRUB/ [7]: https://github.com/thias/glim?tab=readme-ov-file#troubleshooting [8]: https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/ +[9]: https://git.sr.ht/~a14m/OTW/tree/master/Natas.md |