GitHub - fnr1r/ventoy-meta
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Posting this since quite a bit has changed since I last posted about this on !technology@lemmy.world.

Here’s a rough breakdown of the current status:

  • shared Ventoy components: build and seem to work, needs more testing
    • grub / menu - builds
    • EDK II apps / UEFI chainloader and more - builds
    • iPXE / BIOS chainloader - builds, with fixes for newer toolchains
    • ISO9660 and UDF drivers - TODO
  • Ventoy CPIO / Linux ramdisk: builds; I deemed musl xzcat unneeded, so I skipped it; needs more testing
  • wimboot / Windows chainloader (?) - stalled, I lack the necessary knowledge to work on it
  • geom-ventoy / FreeBSD disk mapping kernel module - is being worked on, slowly; not ready for testing
  • anything else is a TODO

This should be enough to boot Linux with just what’s built manually, but I haven’t tried that yet.

Secure Boot is just done by using a pre-built bypass package. I’ll deal with that later.

Having more people testing this would be nice. :)

Cheers

  • CrypticCoffee@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    8 hours ago

    Credit to you. Many complained, but you went out of your way to solve the problems. The output here has real value. Thanks.

  • koala@programming.dev
    3·
    13 hours ago

    I’m still a huge fan of Ventoy, but lately I have been finding more and more issues with it.

    So I decided to investigate using a Raspberry Pi Zero with a USB adapter to create a virtual drive:

    https://github.com/alexpdp7/alexpdp7/blob/master/hardware/using-an-rpi-zero-as-an-usb-drive-to-install-operating-systems.md

    It’s very wonky and manual at the moment, but I have managed to boot all Linux ISOs successfully so far. Unfortunately, I think only ISOhybrid works OOB, so Windows ISO do not work. I have found some scripts to take Windows ISO and make them ISOhybrid, but haven’t gotten around to doing that yet.

    I think it should be doable to package this nicely.

  • Ludrol@szmer.info
    16·
    2 days ago

    Thanks for the thankless work. I hope that the changes will be accepted upstream.

  • balsoft@lemmy.ml
    6·
    2 days ago

    Are there any instructions on how to build this all to get the ventoy installer binary that can replace upstream? Or is the project not up to this stage yet? I can go without Windows and FreeBSD support.

    • fnrirOP
      3·
      2 days ago

      On Linux installation is done through a series of scripts and vtoycli. I haven’t worked on that yet, but there’s build scripts there that should do the trick, but since they build it for multiple architectures, you’ll have to run just the stuff for your arch (probably x86_64).

      sth like:

      cd vtoycli/fat_io_lib/release
gcc -specs "/usr/local/musl/lib/musl-gcc.specs" -O2 -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 fat*.c -c
ar -rc libfat_io_64.a *.o
cd ../..
gcc -specs "/usr/local/musl/lib/musl-gcc.specs" -Os -static -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -Ifat_io_lib/include fat_io_lib/lib/libfat_io_64.a *.c -o vtoycli_64
# Optional
strip --strip-all vtoycli_64
      • balsoft@lemmy.ml
        3·
        2 days ago

        Do I have to build all other parts myself before then? (I’m trying to package it for Nix so that other people can also build it more easily)

        • fnrirOP
          2·
          2 days ago

          Pretty much. I do have some releases, but considering Nix’s philosophy you probably should. Ventoy-CPIO should build fine, if the right toolchains and dietlibc are in PATH. Ventoy-boot relies on overlay mounts though, so it might not build within Nix.

    • fnrirOP
      3·
      1 day ago

      Interesting. Sadly it only supports FAT32, NTFS and EXFAT with no Linux filesystems.
      And Ventoy is free. It’s hard to argue with free.

      • krolden@lemmy.ml
        1·
        1 day ago

        Yeah that’s only for the partition that contains your ISOs.

        You can make another ext4 partition on it if you wanted, it just has to not be the first partition on the disk.

        Oh and the encryption feature is dumb dont even bother with it

        Also you still have to buy your flash drive so why not invest in something better

    • pogmommy@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      1 day ago

      Yeah, bought the st300 after having repeated issues with ventoy not properly mounting disk images causing multiple Linux distro installs to fail. My st300 might be one of my best investments as a technician just for how seamless and simple it is to use.

      • krolden@lemmy.ml
        1·
        1 day ago

        I never got uefi images booting properly on those grub multi boot utility drives. Granted the last time I bothered with it was like 10 years ago now since ive had multiple different iodd enclosures since then.

  • eneff@discuss.tchncs.de
    18·
    2 days ago

    Thank you for your work on this! It’s highly appreciated!

    I’m about as broke as it gets currently, but are there ways to send money your way in case someone who’s able to comes across this?

    • fnrirOPEnglish
      12·
      2 days ago

      Focus on yourself first. I do have a Ko-Fi, but I don’t promote it much.

      • arsCynic@beehaw.org
        1·
        16 hours ago

        “Can you use dd to create multiboot USB drives?”

        No. But in my case that’s just a minor inconvenience considering the infrequency of having to use a live USB. And at work I just use separate USBs for wiping drives and OS installs. I much prefer the peace of mind that comes with knowing there’s no Ventoy blob that could potentially infect all its installed operating systems with malware.

        In any case, it seems it is possible to manually make a multiboot USB drive manually. Haven’t tried it yet though.

        “Even the link you shared lists Ventoy as an option.”

        I know. I simply linked that website because it’s where I learned dd from and because for novices it might be less overwhelming than the Arch Wiki.