Re: Combining Distro DVD's
Good evening All I know some people just like a challenge. Who will use the result, though I wonder if ventoy would achieve a similar result There is a 32MB partition for efi; and the rest, which for me at present is: ls /media/keith/Ventoy/ apps linuxmint-21.3-cinnamon-64bit-beta.iso configfiles lmde-6-cinnamon-64bit.iso debian-live-12.4.0-amd64-cinnamon.iso manjaro-cinnamon-23.0.1-230921-linux65.iso debian-testing-amd64-netinst.iso Win10_22H2_EnglishInternational_x64v1.iso kali-linux-2023.4-installer-purple-amd64.iso keith@lenv0 $ the iso's are just copied onto the main partition. apps/ is my daily drivers that I keep on a separate partition. Things like firefox & thunderbird dev editions and a few appImages configfiles/: .bashrc, _history _aliases data for espanso I boot to the USB and am offered the list of iso's to start, just like grubb on a multI boot system. click the iso I want I imagine that the subsequent iso's could be opened after you boot from the first iso. Next project - get the iso to retain any changes I make All the best Keith Bainbridge keith.bainbridge.3...@gmail.com +61 (0)447 667 468 UTC + 10:00 On 13/2/24 19:24, hw wrote: On Mon, 2024-02-12 at 13:41 -0500, Steve Matzura wrote: I thought it'd be a nice idea to combine any and all distribution media for a release into a single medium--a USB drive, of course. I'd start by creating my USB drive by extracting the first DVD to it, thereby ensuring the boot block and boot material is where it should be. But then what do I do with the additional media? [...] Maybe put a copy of a Debian mirror onto another partition.
Re: Combining Distro DVD's
On Tue, Feb 13, 2024 at 09:24:47AM +0100, hw wrote: > On Mon, 2024-02-12 at 13:41 -0500, Steve Matzura wrote: > > I thought it'd be a nice idea to combine any and all distribution media > > for a release into a single medium--a USB drive, of course. I'd start by > > creating my USB drive by extracting the first DVD to it, thereby > > ensuring the boot block and boot material is where it should be. But > > then what do I do with the additional media? > > [...] > > Maybe put a copy of a Debian mirror onto another partition. > "All distribution media" - including source - is a very large USB stick. If you want the DVD contents, for binaries on one architecture - say amd64, start with the 16G image or the Blu-Ray and you've got it fairly well - you will need to use jigdo to do this.. There have been discussions on this a few times on the list - look back and someone posted a script to do this. >From experience: writing even 29G reliably to a USB3 stick takes a _long_ time. The odds of a bit error while writing much more go up significantly. For Debian on a desert island - a laptop with a mirror on a 4G NVME would be fine. Mirror is probably a more reliable way to go. All the best, Andy
Re: Combining Distro DVD's
On Mon, 2024-02-12 at 13:41 -0500, Steve Matzura wrote: > I thought it'd be a nice idea to combine any and all distribution media > for a release into a single medium--a USB drive, of course. I'd start by > creating my USB drive by extracting the first DVD to it, thereby > ensuring the boot block and boot material is where it should be. But > then what do I do with the additional media? > [...] Maybe put a copy of a Debian mirror onto another partition.
Re: Combining Distro DVD's
Hi, Steve Matzura wrote: > I thought it'd be a nice idea to combine any and all distribution media for > a release into a single medium--a USB drive, of course. The initial situation will depend much on the distro ... But given that Debian is about the last one i know with all its packages in DVD images, i assume you mean the Debian installer ISO sets. Like https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/jigdo-dvd/ > I'd start by > creating my USB drive by extracting the first DVD to it, thereby ensuring > the boot block and boot material is where it should be. There is the dilemma that unpacking the first ISO into the USB stick's filesystem will not enable the copied boot stuff, and that putting the first ISO plainly onto the stick (e.g. by dd) will leave you with a read-only filesystem on the stick. So you'd need to invest some extra expertise. Either for making a bootable USB stick with read-write filesystem from the first ISO, or for merging the ISOs into a single ISO. In the former case you need knowledge about booting Debian (by GRUB, i guess). In the latter case you need xorriso. > But then what do I > do with the additional media? Surely there will be some files with the same > name among the individual pieces of media, and some will probably contain > the same info while others probably will not. They should be either either merged or discarded, depending on their meaning and on their importance for your final result. I.e. whether you merged the ISOs or you extracted to a writable filesystem and installed a bootloader yourself. The way of merging multiple Debian DVD ISOs of the same release and CPU architecture to a single ISO by xorriso is described in https://wiki.debian.org/MergeDebianIsos (The script merge_debian_isos would also be the source to learn about the proper handling of files with expected name collision.) I leave it to others to elaborate the ways of creating a bootable USB stick with writable filesystem and the content of Debian DVD 1 with work-ready installer software. Then it's an adventure on its own to add all the packages from the other DVD images and to properly care for their non-package files. Have a nice day :) Thomas
Re: Combining Distro DVD's
Steve Matzura (12024-02-12): > I thought it'd be a nice idea to combine any and all distribution media for > a release into a single medium--a USB drive, of course. I'd start by > creating my USB drive by extracting the first DVD to it, thereby ensuring > the boot block and boot material is where it should be. But then what do I > do with the additional media? Surely there will be some files with the same > name among the individual pieces of media, and some will probably contain > the same info while others probably will not. What do I have to watch for > and make sure I don't overwrite, but add to, when extracting files from the > additional disks to bag it all up and make a single medium which contains > everything in one place? If the live media are compatible with GRUB's loopback mechanism, you can follow these instructions: https://nsup.org/~george/comp/live_iso_usb/grub_hybrid.html https://nsup.org/~george/comp/live_iso_usb/ Regards, -- Nicolas George
