Sunday, January 22, 2012

MultiBoot LiveUSB - multiple iso + persistence

I had found a usb multiboot solution some time ago and realized that I had not written about it.  I would like to demonstrate an amazing piece of software that does exactly what it claims.  It does it so well, that I have purchased two 8Gig USB keys to manage using this software.

The concept is the same as the Ubuntu USB-creator, or even the same as Unetbootin.  Both of those tools are only loading a single disk image (.iso) onto a usb key (typically 1G).  These tools are amazingly useful to try out liveCD versions of linux distributions without a full blown hard drive install, but also not at the mind-numbing slowness of a proper CD Burn as the CD-Rom devices are so much slower than disk access that you no longer get an experience for an alternative operating system that is enjoyable.

Both of the tools I have already mentioned have over the last year and a half come to incorporate also a persistence mode which means that unlike a burned CD, a usb key in persistence mode with extra space is able to maintain updates across reboots.  So if you add an application to a livecd .iso on usb key using one of those tools with the addition of persistence mode then any application installed would be persistent the next time the usb key was used for a reboot.

Being a very demanding geek, the idea of a collection of usb keys with single unique linux distributions seemed too troublesome.  One key for installing Ubuntu on machines of folks who are converting.  Another key with rescueCD on it for diagnostics and data recovery.  Another key for me to try out the latest version of distros.  And so the list goes on, and then I end up with a small grocery bag filled with 1Gig usb keys each unlabeled and with unique purpose.

Enter the best usb boot tool I have found to date.  MultiBoot LiveUSB.  This software is truly amazing.  Will manage as many distro's/livecd's that the usb key can store.   Will let you load as just the live version or _also_ with persistence.  There are some limitations to which distro's have persistence available.  Most of those limitation have to do with the manner in which the .iso's are made.  The tool also allows you to remove old distro's and add new ones.  The tool also has a list of distro's known to work which looks like the majority listing of distro's from Distrowatch.

I can't say enough about this tool.  An affordable 8G usb key can now be turned into a virtual "swiss army knife" of bootable linux distro's.  It supports much more and my description of the software here is abbreviated.  The website is in original french, but the application has been translated into many languages.  Seems at this time there is no windows or mac port of this app, so you need linux to manage it.  So just to be ironic, maybe you make a persistence install on a usb key with this application installed to manage all other usb keys.

--
CafeNinja
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

EXACTLY what I was looking for. Thanks a bunch. Great review. Going to try it now with two custom ISO files made using Remastersys. I'll try to remember to come back with an update.

Anonymous said...

An alternative is multiboot

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/multiboot-create-a-multiboot-usb-from-linux/

HeriNXI said...

multiboot + persistence is what i'm looking for, thanks for the info.

Unknown said...

I did not find any software on this website, only USB keys to order. Where is the software to download?

CafeNinja said...

http://liveusb.info/dotclear/index.php?pages/install

Repos are available for debian.

Or as a standalone live cd distro:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/multisystem/files/iso/

Anonymous said...

Hi.

Many years have passed since the publication of this article, and my last trying with the mentioned Tool here was in the 2017 year. I was able to create MultiBoot Linux with the 'MultiBoot Live Creator' (MultiSystem -- the correct name of the presented tool here -- seems to be missed by the Author of this little Article..), however it was with a single "casper-rw" persistence file for each Linux Distro installed (if I were install another Linux Distribution, it would be automatically overwritten by the next itself ran). I've had managing all this in the past (Linux Mint 17 MATE and Debian-Live 8.9 GNOME and MATE, to be more specfic, all 32-bits OSes for a NetBook at that time, with an objective and with the finality to demonstrate a Linux Server Deployment running, from a little localhost (using the loopback addresss) environment test). To me be able to use MultiBoot (and meant to be also "Multi Persistent" too.., if I'm not wrong, as the Article here is dated to 2012..), and to be able to use also a Linux File Native System Format (FAT32 can fit only 4GiB (4.096MiB) ), I could, in my own experience, suggest the usage of others tools, available also to Linux: "Easy2Boot" and "MultiBootUSB".


https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/202529/how-to-create-multiboot-usb-w-persistence-for-multiple-os

Easy2Boot:

https://www.easy2boot.com/

https://www.easy2boot.com/add-payload-files/list-of-tested-payload-files/

https://www.easy2boot.com/download/

MultiBootUSB:


http://multibootusb.org/

https://sourceforge.net/projects/multibootusb/

Not being FAT32 or NTFS only, I could recommend to search for the most molded GUI tool for these purposes (and recently CLI too): The "MultiBootUSB", that does the work, also for *NIX Operating Systems (as would be the case with "openSUSE-Live 42.3", that doesn't supports NFTS, and exceeds the file size for a Linux-Live Image to be a suitable openSUSE version to an usage of a FAT32 File System (the most common available for MultiBoot Live Creators).

From MultiBootUSB "GUIDE" page:

Formatted USB disk:

FAT32, NTFS, ext2/3/4 or Btrfs filesystem. However, FAT filesystem is recommended and ext2/3/4 or Btrfs filesystems will only work under Linux.


That's all I can tell for you the current moment here.


Bye for all.

Anonymous said...

Hello again:


Complementing what was said here above:


The 'MultiBootUSB' Tool aims to preserve GRUB Options at the primary screen, and at least is evoluting to provide this in many variants of Linux/*NIX Distros:


QEMU Simulation Test:

http://multibootusb.org/img/boot-qemu-iso.png


http://multibootusb.org/page_features/


Linux distributions

multi-linux



MultiBootUSB supports many distros and still counting. There are no pre-configured distro-specific files included in MultiBootUSB. The configuration files are modified dynamically during installation so that the user receives all available default boot options for each distro.




Thanks all for the attention.

Anonymous said...

Hi again

Sorry.. I've missed to provide the main link for MultiBootUSB Repository in Development state/status. To help the Development of 'MultiBootUSB', here is the Git Repository for it at GitHub:

https://github.com/mbusb/multibootusb

*(If you are a specialist or only an enthusiast, I'd recommend you to try git clone both the 'master' and the 'devel' branches of MultiBootUSB at GitHub Repository (depending to your skills and knowledges) .


I think that with this my last comment, I could help many people here with my suggestions.


Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Hi again


The mention of "MultiBootUSB" by me has nothing to do within the subject here, that would be instead the "MultiSystem" Software, from French Developers.


The only needed of mention "MultiBootUSB" is for make a comparison between the MultiSystem (here mentioned by the Original Poster and Blogger Author) and the MultiBootUSB.


And MultiSystem (the originally mentioned software) is made with GTK+. The MultiBootUSB is made in Python.


I expect that I've not caused the confusion here by my comment:


https://github.com/mbusb/multibootusb/issues/502#issue-581662701


If you are not a native speaker, or have domain of the English idiom, please use a Translator like Google Translator to translate the English messages to your native/dominated idiom.


Thanks.


Bye.