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aguslr / multibootusb

A collection of GRUB files and scripts that will allow you to create a pendrive capable of booting different ISO files
https://mbusb.aguslr.com
GNU General Public License v3.0
571 stars 154 forks source link

No way to simply "cat" multibootusb to a drive #238

Open snshn opened 5 years ago

snshn commented 5 years ago

Currently the installation requires to perform a lot of time/energy-consuming operations which I see as a bottleneck regarding getting this way of running ISOs more popular, perhaps even standard among GNU/Linux users. Would it be possible to start issuing releases which could be simply dd'd to drives, possibly automatically expanded upon first boot, or containing a SystemRescueCD image on-board to be able to boot into it from the default installation and expand the partition to the full/desired size of the drive?

aguslr commented 5 years ago

Hi, @vflyson! Sorry for not answering sooner.

There is indeed plenty of room for improvement on that regard but I don't see a simple option.

I've thought about using an image with GRUB and stuff that could be dumped into a pendrive with dd but that would require us keeping up with GRUB releases. Also, I wouldn't trust a binary from a random GitHub repo and wouldn't expect most users to do so either.

I think the best option is something like what was proposed in #247 about having separate repositories with tools to configure the pendrive, maybe with options to download a few distros too.

snshn commented 5 years ago

Please don't worry, thank you for the reply.

~What do you think about creating a minimalistic and easy-to-read shell script which would generate a dd-able image without requiring any dependencies?~ What if the README.md file would show right off the bat that it's possible to create a dd-able image by running ./makeUSB.sh multibootusb.img, and then running something like dd if=multibootusb.img of=/dev/sdb bs=1M? I believe that would instill confidence in people who see that README for the first time, and also separate the script from a random GitHub repo from modifying the filesystem directly, reassuring that the user is always in control where the image will get written, using the command they trust (dd)?