[HN Gopher] Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility
___________________________________________________________________
Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility
Author : quyleanh
Score : 531 points
Date : 2021-05-07 04:00 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| fctorial wrote:
| Unless you're trying to flash some decade old operating system
| 'dd' should do the job. I haven't seen a non hybrid iso in years.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| I find it amusing if not a bit sad that the best utility for
| making bootable Linux flash drives is currently on Windows
| instead of Linux. The current state of making bootable USB drives
| on linux is actually quite crappy. UNetbootin used to be a good
| option but has stopped working on a lot of distros. Etcher.io
| worked great for a while, but has also stopped working for most
| situations. The built-in disk image creator in ubuntu flavors
| works, but only for certain situations.
|
| But at least good ole Rufus works :) Wish we could get something
| like Rufus (or even better, YUMMI) working perfectly on Linux
| FnuGk wrote:
| What is wrong with just using dd?
| mrwm wrote:
| To tag on, what's wrong with plain ol' cat or cp?
| ggm wrote:
| dd can do seek, skip, re-block. It's unusual to need the
| features but they exist for good reasons. I used dd to
| transfer 4.1BSD release tapes to a vax 11/720 via rl02
| 10meg pack and reconstruct the chunks on the receive side,
| long ago.
| ok123456 wrote:
| ddrescue will do this for you automatically to recover
| from a bad block.
| ball_of_lint wrote:
| Not everyone is comfortable using the command line or even
| knows that dd exists.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| I know it exists but I don't trust it as most tools say
| "write in ISO mode (recommended) or dd mode (not
| recommended)"
| hansel_der wrote:
| probably because on most linux distros provide an image (iso)
| that can simply be written on any media and boots.
|
| like: cat ubuntu.iso >/dev/sdd
|
| or
|
| dd if=./ubuntu.iso of=/dev/sdd
| cesarb wrote:
| Or you can go the GUI way, and use for instance gnome-disks
| to write the image to the disk (which also reduces the chance
| of writing to the wrong disk; when writing through the
| command line, I prefer to use the /dev/disk/by-path symlinks
| for that reason).
| scbrg wrote:
| > I prefer to use the /dev/disk/by-path symlinks for that
| reason
|
| That was a neat trick. Thank you for mentioning it.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| Right but if you select the wrong /dev device, you just wiped
| your drive. GUI tools will auto select "the usb one"
| typically. Also tools like YUMI can make things like a
| multiboot drive with 50 different linux distros on one drive
| and set up things like persistent disk space for the ubuntu
| distributions and can set up WindowsToGo drives. Not sure how
| to do that with cat / dd.
| MarkSweep wrote:
| Rufus is great for writing Windows ISOs to thumb drives.
| Sometimes it tries to be too smart though. In particular I had
| trouble writing a SmartOS disk image successfully.
|
| I tried writing something[1] that would be a little smarter than
| Win32 Disk Imager. That is, it will adjust EFI partition
| labeling. Otherwise it will just write the image. After some
| experimentation that is what was needed to get a SmartOS disk
| image to boot on my old laptop.
|
| It sounds obvious in retrospect, but you can't use something like
| dd to write invalid disk partitioning data and expect it to boot.
| EFI expects there to be a header at the beginning and end of the
| disk. Furthermore, I can't try to "optimize" my disk image writer
| by skipping zeroed sectors and expect everything to work out
| fine. Without knowledge of the file system format, leaving
| sectors uncleared causes all kinds of fun data corruption.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/AustinWise/SimpleDiskImager
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Easy2Boot is another good one. Creates USB boot disks with
| multiple OS ISOs on and boot into any of them. It's no longer
| being updated, but still works, just used it this week.
|
| https://www.easy2boot.com/
|
| The only caveat is you need to make sure each ISO is stored on
| the USB in a contiguous file, since it tricks the host machine
| into thinking each ISO is separate partition. It includes a .cmd
| script for doing this on Windows, or on Linux you can use `rsync
| --preallocate` to copy the ISOs continuously.
| vxNsr wrote:
| Why do you say it's no longer being updated? Looks like he last
| posted 3/30/21.
|
| He's actually great, when he's online he has a chat option on
| his website and he'll help you with any questions you have, I
| somehow screwed up an E2B MBR and he very graciously walked me
| through fixing it.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Hmm, I could have sworn I saw a comment somewhere on the site
| that it's no longer in development, but can't find it now,
| maybe I just hallucinated it. Good to know it's still going
| then!
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| I have been running https://netboot.xyz/ from a docker container
| for years and don't look back. I even set it up to have local
| copies of the distros I most install, so it picks it up from a
| local server instead of downloading a fresh copy each time.
| mcdevilkiller wrote:
| Rufus is so good. If you have your ISO downloaded and your media
| plugged in, it takes 6 clicks and 10 seconds to start writing to
| the bootable device. So easy and simple, and it works with
| everything.
| unixhero wrote:
| For Linux usb writing from Windows, I have had great success for
| many years with Lili https://www.linuxliveusb.com/
| nemetroid wrote:
| I recently had to create a bootable USB drive, and tried
| following the instructions on the Arch wiki[1] to just use
| coreutils: # cat path/to/archlinux-
| version-x86_64.iso > /dev/sdx or # dd bs=4M
| if=path/to/archlinux-version-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdx conv=fsync
| oflag=direct status=progress
|
| However, this was ridiculously slow. I waited a long time for
| cat, but not long enough to figure out if it would ever finish.
| dd reported speeds of less than half a MB/s, gnome-disk-utility
| was about eight times faster.
|
| I wonder if a different set of options to dd would have given
| better results. From what I can tell, gnome-disk-utility is just
| open() and write() (with suitable flags) in the end.
|
| 1:
| https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/USB_flash_installation_medi...
| MayeulC wrote:
| You sometimes have to use a bit of guesswork to find the best
| `bs` value, 8M is usually faster IME. I think gnome-disk
| benchmarks it?
|
| Now, you could also do without fsync, and call `sync` at the
| end, it could be faster.
| puzzlingcaptcha wrote:
| Rufus also has the nifty and often overlooked ability to create
| VHD images from drives.
|
| https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/wiki/FAQ#Saving_an_existing...
| znedw wrote:
| DriveDroid (https://www.drivedroid.io) is pretty good for this
| sorta thing
| mlvljr wrote:
| I think this was the tool that was happily reporting copying my
| files over to a USB stick despite there being copying errors (for
| which it didn't check, apparently).
|
| Left me puzzled with regard to why copying over a new image still
| led to the older one booting for a while.
|
| Switching to a different USB slot (2 VS 3) solved it, iirc (and I
| think I never used Rufus again).
| ball_of_lint wrote:
| From personal experience, Rufus is an excellent project with a
| responsive and helpful owner/maintainer.
|
| I once had an issue using it with a certain computer + SD card
| adapter combination. I posted some logs and they responded within
| a few days with a fix. Thank you pbatard!
| sdlion wrote:
| Windows images that are over 4.3GB(I don't remember the exact max
| size) most image burning tools will fallback to NTFS on the USB
| formatting and some motherboards/laptops don't like this. (Even
| on my rather modern Dell laptop)
|
| The best solution so far I've found is to manually partition the
| USB into a 1GB FAT32 partition and the rest NTFS. Then you
| extract the files where needed [0]
|
| I learned this method just last year but it seems it's pretty
| universal. At least for Win10 ISOs. And I don't have to boot
| Windows and wait for its updates!
|
| [0] https://techbit.ca/2019/02/creating-a-bootable-
| windows-10-ue...
| pxeboot wrote:
| That seems far more complicated than just using DISM,
| PowerShell or wimlib (on Linux or Windows) to split the
| install.wim file into two parts, which I believe older versions
| of Rufus (or a similar utility) offered to do.
|
| https://wimlib.net/man1/wimsplit.html
| jevinskie wrote:
| Yep, wimlib is the portable magic that makes FAT32/4GB a non-
| issue.
|
| It is still annoying to have to use Windows to run NTLite. ;)
|
| https://evanshortiss.com/create-a-windows-install-usb-via-
| ma...
| vxNsr wrote:
| Or use ventoy and never worry about large files again.
| VMtest wrote:
| I used the same method as you, but from different source.
|
| I tried to dig into my documentation for the link that I saved,
| it doesn't seem like I saved the google search terms for it,
| but they can be deduced from the link anyway.
|
| 1. https://win10.guru/usb-install-media-with-larger-than-4gb-
| wi...
| Stratoscope wrote:
| I'm as big a Rufus fan as anyone, but for Windows 10 why
| wouldn't I just use Microsoft's boot image creator?
|
| That's what I've done lately, and it works every time with no
| fuss.
|
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
|
| Edit: I just remembered that you might not be on a Windows
| device, in which case you may well want to download the ISO and
| use Rufus to make a bootable stick from it.
| [deleted]
| chrisandchris wrote:
| If you're under Windows and want any stick, use Rufus. If
| you're under Linux (or Mac) and have an Iso, use dd.
|
| At least that's how I do it.
| foxrider wrote:
| WoeUSB is what you have to use on Linux to create a
| bootable Windows thumbdrive, dd only works for isohybrid
| images, and Windows isn't one.
| moistbar wrote:
| IIRC you used to be able to make a bootable Windows stick
| on Linux simply by extracting the contents of the ISO
| onto a USB stick and marking it bootable. Is that still
| possible now that EFI is everywhere?
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| WoeUSB hasn't been very reliable for me. I've had better
| results booting up a Windows VM to use Rufus with USB
| passthrough to the drive instead.
| wooben wrote:
| I'm love/hating this idea because now I want to burn a
| LiveUSB running Linux with a QEMU Windows VM already set
| up on it. I can run it live and have Windows 10 "PE" or I
| can install it to a host and have Windows up and running
| fairly smoothly without going through the OOBE.
| antibuddy wrote:
| My memory is a bit hazy, but I remember dd not working for
| Windows images. Did you test that recently?
| chrisandchris wrote:
| Some SO user mention it seems to work with dd, however I
| did not test that recently. Most comments seem to mention
| that it's more difficult than dd.
|
| [0] https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/598632
| vetinari wrote:
| Normally, for UEFI boot, you could be able just to create
| a FAT32 partition and copy the ISO content there. In the
| past, it was perfectly workable way to do so.
|
| Except for the unfortunate install.wim file. The first
| releases of Windows 10 were fine, they had it under 4GB,
| but some of the half-year releases have it grown over
| 4GB, and FAT32 cannot handle that. Thus all the
| mitigations you see here.
|
| The Microsoft's USB tool does not use install.wim; it
| contains install.esd instead. It is basically the same
| thing, but with different compression, so it is still a
| bit under 4GB. You can recompress install.wim into
| install.esd, if you have the inclination ...and a windows
| machine nearby (dism /export-image).
| verst wrote:
| I have used Rufus from Macs (my primary work devices) to
| create bootable Windows installers on USB to reinstall my
| gaming PCs plenty of times :)
| Strom wrote:
| The official Windows media creation tool is a bit of an
| abomination. Primarily because it is slow and has very quirky
| requirements that it doesn't advertise and only checks for at
| the very last second.
|
| You download the tool and want to create a Windows 10
| bootable USB, so you run the executable.
|
| Then you find out that it won't let you choose where to save
| the temporary ISO file that it wants to download. It's
| hardcoded to the C:\ drive which can easily be a small SSD
| that is already almost full. You grumble a bit, proceed to
| delete/move some files off of C:\ so that it could download
| the ISO and then restart the tool.
|
| This time the download finishes successfully, but after the
| download you get an error because it turns out it wants to
| extract what it downloaded - and of course hardcoded to the
| C:\ drive. You moan a bit, proceed to delete/move even more
| files off of C:\ and restart the tool.
|
| Third time's the charm right? Well after waiting around
| forever, it has once again downloaded the ISO and this time
| also extracted it. Then it informs you that it can't actually
| create the bootable USB stick because it needs to be run as
| an administrator. You scratch your head in disbelief,
| wondering why instead of giving you an error message it
| doesn't just launch a privilege escalation prompt - or at
| least have the privilege requirement defined in its manifest.
|
| The fourth time has to work. You manually run it as
| administrator, it re-downloads & re-extracts the ISO, and you
| still get the error message that it needs to run as an
| administrator. What is going on? You google for answers and
| realize that you've found the only Windows app in existence
| that is not satisfied with mere privilege escalation but
| instead demands you to be running directly as the
| administrator.
|
| You log out of your regular user account, log in as the
| administrator, re-download & re-extract the ISO - and then
| finally the tool is willing to create the bootable USB.
|
| ...
|
| On the other hand it is possible to create the Windows 10
| bootable USB with just the command line [1] and this can be
| done without having the ISO on your C:\ drive, without having
| to extract the ISO files to a temporary location before being
| copied to the USB, or having to directly log in as
| administrator. A simple escalated privilege command prompt
| will do just fine.
|
| Thus I'm left wondering what is going on at Microsoft. Did
| they assign some random intern to create the Windows 10
| installation media tool? It is very incompetently made.
|
| --
|
| [1] https://davidzych.com/install-windows-10-from-a-usb-
| flash-dr...
| userbinator wrote:
| _Thus I 'm left wondering what is going on at Microsoft.
| Did they assign some random intern to create the Windows 10
| installation media tool? It is very incompetently made._
|
| I get the same feeling with a lot of other things in Win10
| (which I'm only using because I'm forced to). IMHO it's a
| sign of the shift to a metrics-driven culture, where the
| "unquantifiable" parts of quality are being completely
| ignored in favour of bettering numerical ones. Microsoft
| isn't the only one, this seems to be happening industry-
| wide.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| It's pretty terrible.
|
| If you go to the Windows 10 download page, you can trick it
| into giving you the ISO by changing your responsive view
| mode in dev tools to an iPad or something and refreshing
| the page. Then burn with Rufus.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| Rufus does in fact have a long explanation of this on their
| FAQ:
|
| https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/wiki/FAQ#blah-uefi-blah-fat...
|
| You probably left Secure Boot on. That prevents loading the
| NTFS UEFI driver.
| senectus1 wrote:
| yup. a staple for the toolkit.
| imperialdrive wrote:
| Just used it today due to Microsoft removing their Windows USB
| utility. Lifesaver.
| AmVess wrote:
| The Windows 10 downloader makes a bootable USB as an option.
| Certainly not useful for early versions of Windows, but works
| fine for W10.
| Tsiklon wrote:
| I had a big problem with it last week when creating a 20H2
| installation USB, it created a FAT32 disk instead of a NTFS
| disk.
|
| Unfortunately install.wim on that image is bigger than the
| FAT32 max file size. Meaning that while the USB booted in the
| system, the installation was not possible.
|
| Of course the installer doesn't keep the disk image it
| downloads to make the usb, so it's another 5-6G download to
| try again - this may be problematic for people on limited
| bandwidth connections.
|
| Personally I just created an NTFS partition on my USB drive
| and copied the contents of another windows iso over to it.
| birriel wrote:
| Rufus is really neat. However, for writing distro images, the dd
| command is my favorite. Per the Arch Wiki:
|
| dd bs=4M if=path/to/archlinux-version-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdx
| conv=fsync oflag=direct status=progress
| chociej wrote:
| Lazy mode:
|
| # <image.iso >/dev/sdx; sync
| amelius wrote:
| Does anyone know of a reliable way to install Ubuntu on a USB
| disk?
|
| (I don't mean Ubuntu Live, I'm talking about a full-fledged
| install which works on BIOSes that are picky about things like
| EFI).
| mrjin wrote:
| Well have to say Rufus is good. But there is a far better tool:
| Ventoy.
|
| You will only need to format your thumb drive once and for all.
| After that, you will simply only need to copy the image file such
| as .iso, .vhd etc on to the drive and you are all set. Check
| details from the following sites.
|
| https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html
| https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| Wow this is super handy!
| lathiat wrote:
| A great software solution. I had a look and once Linux boots it
| actually uses devicemapper to map a dm device to the raw
| sectors containing the iso which it extracts (as it may be
| fragmented) to feed to dmsetup. Kinda crazy.
|
| There is also a couple of hardware projects that to that in
| hardware. I used the ISOstick for many years.
|
| You can also PXE NetBoot a lot of installers with dynamic menu
| selection - see http://netboot.xyz
| mschuster91 wrote:
| I have been searching for something like that for _ages_.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| For ages, there have been Zalman enclosures for making ISO-
| based multi-bootable external HDDs/SSDs working this way and
| on a lower level. And iodd which are essentially the same
| (AFAIK Zalman rebranded them).
| pityJuke wrote:
| I know back in the day, there was a very similar tool called
| SARDU [0]. It is closed source from what I know, so if that
| was your breaking point, fair enough.
|
| EDIT: There have also been YUMI and Easy2Boot in a similar
| vein before Ventoy.
|
| [0]: https://www.sarducd.it/
| rzr wrote:
| Yes I just discovered this lastweek It worked fine from
| Linux.
|
| I only had to patch script:
| https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/pull/877
|
| I guess it will be valuable to ship this in distros no ?
| jhvkjhk wrote:
| I tried Ventoy several months ago, and go back to Rufus because
| it can't boot EndeavourOS. That's weird because every comment I
| saw about Ventoy is positive.
| thom wrote:
| Wow, this has justified an entire year's worth of Hacker News
| dues in one go.
| moistbar wrote:
| I use Ventoy on a 500 GB portable SSD. I have Windows 10,
| FreeBSD, and multiple versions of each distro on it just in
| case. It even works with TempleOS.
|
| All it needs now is some way to keep persistent files and I'll
| never need another thumb drive to install an OS.
| sloshnmosh wrote:
| Wow! Thanks for the heads up on Ventoy!
|
| The only reason I even keep an old Windows based laptop around
| for was to burn ISO's to flash drives with Rufus for repairing
| computers of friends and family members.
| ZFH wrote:
| Rufus has other use cases: imaging distros for Raspberry Pi,
| and (especially handy) reformat HFS, APFS and Ext4 pendrives
| for FAT or NTFS under Windows without jumping through hoops.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Balena Etcher is great for imaging rpi as well.
| brobdingnagians wrote:
| Previous post on Ventoy for some discussion:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24241485
| motiejus wrote:
| I just wrote Ventoy to my megastick, wrote FreeBSD and Debian
| Install images, and it works. Debian Bullseye install image
| complains about low-memory mode, but the booted machine had
| >500MB still available. Abstraction breaks somewhere, I would
| love to know why/how.
|
| Without diving into the source code. :) Has anyone seen
| architecture/design documents on how it actually mounts the ISO
| file and "boots" from it? What does prevent "the other 10%"
| from not working?
|
| I looked through the docs, found these so far:
|
| Memdisk[1] section mentions:
|
| > In normal mode, Ventoy will only read the iso file at booting
| time, and only read the content needed for boot.
|
| Ventoy Compatible?[2] mentions a hook. What does this mean?
|
| > Once Ventoy treats the iso file as Ventoy Compatible, it will
| just make the virtual disk and will not do the hook.
|
| [1]: https://www.ventoy.net/en/doc_memdisk.html
|
| [2]: https://www.ventoy.net/en/doc_compatible_mark.html
| thinkloop wrote:
| > You can copy many files at a time and ventoy will give you a
| boot menu to select them (screenshot).
|
| What the heck! How does anything else still exist!
| maxnoe wrote:
| Yes, this is beyond awesome. Have 64G one with all the ubuntus,
| CentOS, windows, grml with my keys.
|
| Life saver.
| tlamponi wrote:
| UNetbootin has done this since 2007:
|
| <https://unetbootin.github.io/>
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNetbootin>
|
| This is barely a year old and comes all, besides a handful of
| comments, from one account
| https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/graphs/contributors
|
| Personally and subjective this rings quite some alarm bells for
| me, seems just a bit sketchy and in any way really young, so
| not as much time out on the field and thus possibly not as much
| bugs shaken out...
| xbenjii wrote:
| UNetbootin doesn't support multiple installs on the same
| device.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| That doesn't look like it does the same thing at all.
|
| I'm not sure why a piece of software being built by one
| person is sketchy but ok.
| tlamponi wrote:
| It is similar though, but yes it misses the "more ISOs"
| part, which I actually find weird because at that point
| that would be almost cheap to do - that's why I did not
| reverified that bit, sorry.
| moistbar wrote:
| Unetbootin either dumps the raw ISO directly to the block
| device or, in the case of Windows, extracts it to an
| exFAT partition. Ventoy doesn't require you to extract or
| dump the ISOs at all, which is where the real beauty of
| it lies.
| motiejus wrote:
| From wikipedia[1]:
|
| > Multiple installs on the same device are not supported.
|
| If one is limited to a single usb-stick per ISO, it's just
| easier to dd the installation image: run it the way it's
| (hopefully[x]) been tested by the vendors.
|
| Ventoy is a different ballgame: drag & drop ISO file and boot
| from it. I tested it this morning with 3 things I carry
| around myself (debian-live, debian-installer, freebsd release
| installer), and it worked. 1 stick instead of 3, and I still
| have the remaining exFAT partition for other things. And a
| spare encrypted partition if I wanted to (I don't).
|
| Regarding bugs -- it works or it doesn't for your
| distribution. I think it's remarkable what this, seemingly
| single developer, has achieved over a bit more than a
| year[2].
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNetbootin
|
| [2]: https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/commit/2090c6fa978999d4
| ef1e...
|
| [x]: don't get me started with Intel SSD firmware "bootable"
| images.
| [deleted]
| elmo2you wrote:
| Ventoy is indeed one of the best (if not THE best) tool for
| this. Even if it does not support absolutely everything (last
| time I checked), it is by far the most hassle free and sure-
| fire solution.
|
| For context, I have professionally deployed Linux on USB, ever
| since around 2004. I honestly don't care to remember all the
| odd issues/failures I've encountered during those 17 years. The
| situation certainly got better/easier with the years, but it
| can still be a gamble if an odd Linux distro will actually boot
| successfully from USB or not.
|
| Until I discovered Ventoy, about a year or two ago, I would
| always be hesitant to recommend running Linux from USB, unless
| I knew the exact setup (or it involved someone with a decent
| technical skills).
|
| Ventoy is great!!! I'd recommend everyone to at least have a
| look at it. It's one of the very few tools I endorse without
| any hesitation or reservation.
|
| I am in no way personally involved with Ventoy, nor do I have a
| stake in it. I just love the tool for what it is.
| jk7tarYZAQNpTQa wrote:
| > For context, I have professionally deployed Linux on USB,
| ever since around 2004.
|
| Could you point to some good sources that explain in detail
| the whole "bootable USB" world? It seems it's always a hassle
| to get right, especially when preparing a Windows bootable
| USB.
| merb wrote:
| rufus is good for preparing a windows bootable usb with
| uefi boot (so you can later enable secure boot, after
| install), so stick to that. ventoy is great, might be
| better than rufus, when you want multiple os's on a stick,
| but for the average person it's also way more complex than
| rufus. (rufus only works on windows tough)
| mft_ wrote:
| FWIW I couldn't get Ventoy working a while back, from MacOS,
| trying to boot to a Windows ISO for a bootcamp installation.
| That said, fully appreciate this is a tricky endeavour at the
| best of times!
| pnutjam wrote:
| The windows installer iso never works. You have to build a
| bootable PE environment and then have a folder with the
| install files to run.
| wishysgb wrote:
| so cool what is this fuckery
| ppf wrote:
| GRUB
| Algent wrote:
| Just tried it because it seem great and it booted parted magic
| fine but trying to boot on W10 20H2 iso just got me stuck on a
| black window inside ventoy.
|
| Too bad because I'd really like to have a single USB with
| everything I could really carry around instead of a bunch of
| small one.
| Poiesis wrote:
| For the benefit of those who may not know, this has been
| possible (by way of Grub2) with many Linux distros for a while
| now without custom software. Typically you just add extra boot
| arguments that point to the iso and flag that booting from it
| is desired.
|
| Unfortunately the required arguments tend to be poorly
| documented and quite specific to each distro. This looks like a
| neat tool that's sidestepping that issue. If anyone knows of a
| good resource that documents these boot arguments for a range
| of distros, please share!
| [deleted]
| dataflow wrote:
| Assuming you loopback mount the ISO, I think these are the
| major args... fill in the "..." wherever you see them:
| # Ubuntu linux .../vmlinuz boot=casper
| file=.../ubuntu.seed iso-scan/filename=... initrd ...
| # Arch linux .../vmlinuz img_dev=... img_loop=...
| earlymodules=loop initrd ..._ucode.img .../archiso.img
| # Kali linux ... boot=live components findiso=... #
| noautomount initrd ... # GParted linux
| ... boot=live union=overlay config components
| toram=....squashfs findiso=... initrd ...
|
| In general you'll have to boot the kernels directly as shown
| above. Using the built-in GRUB menus won't work in many
| cases. Which makes it difficult to make these future-proof.
|
| You'll also want to make sure you've insmod'ed any modules
| you need for your hardware as necessary (storage, USB,
| etc.)... unfortunately documentation on these is poor, and
| some modules are mutually exclusive, so have fun.
|
| Best of luck getting a robust boot menu script going. Expect
| to spend weeks if not months on it if you're new to GRUB
| scripts/components.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| You can also add toram to copy the entire squashfs root to
| memory. This way you get better performance, and don't need
| to keep your USB disk plugged in.
| mjsir911 wrote:
| And you can find an aggregated list of grub files for
| various distro's at aguslr's multibootusb:
|
| https://github.com/aguslr/multibootusb/tree/master/mbusb.d
| motiejus wrote:
| Are you referring to grub2iso[1]? If so, I was never able to
| make it work: either the ISO is too large (IIRC, in the old
| days it needed to load the full ISO to memory), or, if it did
| boot, the kernel wouldn't find the ISO ("virtual drive")
| itself.
|
| I only got it to work with simple things that load fully from
| RAM -- say, debian-installer, which only requires
| kernel+initrd.
|
| It has to be simple and reliable. If it's only one of them, I
| would rather carry an extra USB stick which I can always
| format (I do).
|
| [1]: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/ISOBoot
| dataflow wrote:
| It was painful but I got Ubuntu ISO working with
| loopback loop (hd0,gpt1)/PATH/TO/UBUNTU.iso set
| root=(loop) configfile /boot/grub/loopback.cfg
|
| which in turn seems to load the kernel via
| linux /casper/vmlinuz file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed iso-
| scan/filename=/PATH/TO/UBUNTU.iso initrd
| /casper/initrd
|
| if you just make sure your path doesn't have spaces. (I
| forget if you also need to pass boot=casper or not.)
|
| You'll have to detect the disk though. It's possible to
| automate it somewhat, but not trivial (at least if you
| don't know how). You'll want to use search. https://www.gnu
| .org/software/grub/manual/grub/html_node/sear...
|
| And make sure you've insmod'ed any modules you need for
| your hardware if necessary (storage, USB, etc.)...
| unfortunately documentation on these is poor, and some
| modules are mutually exclusive, so have fun.
| gnu8 wrote:
| One use case not covered by Ventoy is building the USB
| equivalent of a DOS boot disk, useful for flashing BIOSes.
| kube-system wrote:
| That is a really cool project -- but, Rufus also works for boot
| media for machines that don't support UEFI/BIOS.
| dspillett wrote:
| Another vote for ventoy. Means I can use my large fast USB
| drive (actually an mSATA SSD pulled from a broken laptop, in an
| adapter) as a collection of boot media while keeping the rest
| of the space for other use. I don't need to boot from a distro
| CD often these day, but when I do it is nice that it is much
| faster than my other USB sticks, more convenient than carrying
| a few (Debian, Ubuntu, psSense, Kali, ...) around, and more
| convenient to update when I need something new or otherwise
| specific for the situation.
| Geezus_42 wrote:
| I use a 128GB m.2 SSD in a stick enclosure with USB A on one
| end and USB C on the other. Whole package was $30 from
| Amazon.
| dspillett wrote:
| Yeah, the adapter was cheap. I already had a working drive
| to go into it.
| pingec wrote:
| Interesting, do you have a link?
| squarefoot wrote:
| What a great tool! There goes my collection of small old 1-8 GB
| USB thumb drives, just use a big one for installs.
|
| A nice companion could be a small *PI like board with a script
| that scans repositories for iso updates then downloads them
| using torrent to avoid taxing the servers too much, then when
| necessary (but not more than once every N days to avoid wearing
| the memory) updates the dongle automatically overnight. Just
| stick the dongle when you're back at home and the next morning
| if necessary it is updated to the latest images.
| yarcob wrote:
| Holy whackamoly! Booting directly from .iso files on a thumb
| drive? What kind of black magic is that?
|
| This is the neatest thing I've seen on HN since the actually
| portable executable!
| hansel_der wrote:
| as stated elsewhere, the magic is that grub is able to
| directly boot a iso.
| jtriangle wrote:
| Not just iso files, it'll boot vhd's as well.
| icelancer wrote:
| This is the real insane feature for me. Wow.
| alvarop wrote:
| I keep hearing great things about GRC's InitDisk. Unfortunately
| it's windows-only, but it's able to format almost anything you
| throw at it:
|
| https://www.grc.com/initdisk.htm
| invokestatic wrote:
| I've had issues with most bootable USB creation tools, including
| Rufus, particularly with CentOS (even though it's listed as known
| working!). I'm not sure whose fault this is, really. I think the
| problem is that the tools just try to be too "smart" instead of
| simply dd-ing the bytes over. The best tool I've found for this
| on Windows is Rawrite32.
| AmVess wrote:
| Rufus has issues with some early UEFI implementations and may
| not work at all. I haven't had a problem with current hardware,
| however.
| samplatt wrote:
| The early UEFI days were just a headache for everyone
| involved, really.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Same, although unetbootin in has been the most reliable for me.
| pronoiac wrote:
| Note: it's Windows only.
| deknos wrote:
| what's the equivalent (especially handling bios and uefi and
| stuff) on linux for it? i would be really interested.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| Surprisingly there isn't, though a port is often requested.
| (Nevertheless there're similar tools with either too many or
| less/none options.) But considering what it offers can be
| attained with dd+mkfs maybe a Rufus-like program can be hacked
| with aforementioned tools, some bash, and yad...
| numlock86 wrote:
| same tools really ... stuff like syslinux is included, and for
| "flashing" you could just use dd.
| wodny wrote:
| And it's also worth noting that eg. Debian has been providing
| hybrid images for years. Hybrid meaning you can write them
| directly to block device like USB drive or burn on CD. They
| exploit the fact that ISO images have first blocks empty and
| unused so you can put a classic MBR boot loader there.
| croutonwagon wrote:
| Rufus has only ever given me a problem once....It failed to
| format tails on a cruzer micro.
|
| Anytime that USB drive was stuck in a computer on boot it would
| be able to half boot tails.
|
| I ended up having to use dd to wipe it and all was good.
| fomine3 wrote:
| In my experience, nowadays just format as FAT32 and copy all
| files is fine for most situation, thanks to UEFI.
| pnutjam wrote:
| I like the idea of bootable usb, but 9 times out of 10 it's
| easier for me to do a PXE boot to an iso. I have a linux computer
| setup to provide the PXE boot stuff in my lab.
|
| I used to have a vmware player image that would run pxe boot on a
| 2nd nic I put in my laptop (USB), but it's been awhile since I've
| needed to do that.
| graton wrote:
| Another similar/related project is:
| https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy
| vxNsr wrote:
| Ventoy is great, for a long time I used E2B but lately I've
| been using ventoy because of it's native support of UEFI, my
| only complaint is that I find it to be a bit slower on
| accepting keyboard input compared to E2B. Also E2B has great
| keyboard shortcut support which ventoy entirely lacks (last I
| checked)
| jz9yu616 wrote:
| This is built on top of Ventoy
| https://gbatemp.net/threads/medicat-usb-a-multiboot-linux-us...
| vxNsr wrote:
| I saw a comment in there about how files will get deleted by
| over zealous av's when you plug it into a live system, I
| didn't feel like reading through 60 pages of comments to see
| if someone solved that issue but I was wondering if you have
| any suggestions for preventing that.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| Delete the tools that are meant to compromise a computer.
|
| If you are the sysadmin, put the target computer in a
| policy group that doesn't include live scanning
| temporarily.
|
| There are also USB drives you can get that have a write
| protection switch, but that doesn't mean you will be
| allowed to actually run the software.
| [deleted]
| smusamashah wrote:
| Reminds of Hiren boot cd
| ehsankia wrote:
| Ventoy is AWESOME. No more continuously formatting your drive
| for every ISO you want. You just copy your ISOs on and off the
| drive and they all just work.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Thanks for sharing that is extremely helpful.
| runlevel1 wrote:
| In case others have the same question I did:
|
| Only supports Windows, no Linux or macOS support planned.[1]
|
| [1]: https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/wiki/FAQ#do-you-plan-to-
| por...
|
| EDIT: running on, not creation of boot volumes for
| gruez wrote:
| You shouldn't need it on linux because you can just use dd
| shassard wrote:
| or cp ... cp my.iso /dev/sdc
| abrowne wrote:
| The Debian manual agrees to use `cp` and then to run `sync`
| to make sure all data is really written to the disk. I've
| been doing this for a year or two now with no issues, even
| from a Mac.
| SLWW wrote:
| Been using Rufus about 13 times today, it gets the job done. I
| like it
| spijdar wrote:
| With the disclaimer than I'm primarily a Linux user and may be
| missing something from Microsoft, isn't it weird that there are
| no tools for this functionality that come with Windows? I've
| tried a few times through the life of Windows 10 to make
| installer USB drives from inside Win10 with only microsoft tools
| but never found anything that worked.
|
| Rufus comes through for me again and again, but why do we need to
| download a 3rd party tool for even basic configs? Nothing fancy,
| just a windows installer on USB.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| RMPR wrote:
| Also a Linux user, but back in the Windows days you could use
| Diskpart to do so: select disk ##
| clean create partition primary active
| format fs=ntfs quick assign
|
| Then just extract the disk image to the USB Drive and voila. I
| just noticed it's even documented on Dell's support page[0]
|
| 0: https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-
| us/000136959/create-a-...
| mrjin wrote:
| I have to say that M$ has screwed up diskpart in some
| versions of Windows. Sometimes it simply cannot clean the
| disk correctly after being formatted using some other tools
| such as Rufus.
| josteink wrote:
| That's not a feature of Windows, but simply how UEFI works.
|
| https://www.happyassassin.net/posts/2014/01/25/uefi-boot-
| how...
| josteink wrote:
| Key quote because my linked article is quite extensive:
|
| > What the firmware will actually do when trying to boot in
| this way is reasonably simple. The firmware will look
| through each EFI system partition on the disk in the order
| they exist on the disk. Within the ESP, it will look for a
| file with a specific name and location. On an x86-64 PC, it
| will look for the file \EFI\BOOT\BOOTx64.EFI. What it
| actually looks for is \EFI\BOOT\BOOT{machine type short-
| name}.EFI - 'x64' is the "machine type short-name" for
| x86-64 PCs. The other possibilities are BOOTIA32.EFI
| (x86-32), BOOTIA64.EFI (Itanium), BOOTARM.EFI (AArch32 -
| that is, 32-bit ARM) and BOOTAA64.EFI (AArch64 - that is,
| 64-bit ARM). It will then execute the first qualifying file
| it finds (obviously, the file needs to be in the executable
| format defined in the UEFI specification).
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| It's not weird at all given the target audience of windows.
| 99.9999% of windows user don't need this, so why include it ?
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| Because the small percent of users that do need it serve many
| other Windows users. Seems sorta obvious that SOMEone needs
| the functionality.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| People that have this need have the skill to install the
| required tool.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| That's why we're here talking about Rufus. I'm not sure
| what you were getting at but thank you for demonstrating
| my point.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Microsoft provide a fantastic program for creating Windows boot
| disks that "just works" (Media Creation Tool), and have done so
| for years.
|
| It doesn't support Linux images, though, for reasons that
| should be obvious.
| madars wrote:
| Media Creation Tool requires internet access, so you can't
| just flash a Windows .iso that you have independently
| downloaded from microsoft.com. Of course, you can always
| prepare the correct disklabel yourself, use a BOOTSECT.EXE
| incantation to make the USB bootable, then copy all the
| files, etc, but this really should be easier than that.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Are you sure about that? I distinctly remember using .isos
| with Media Creation Tool.
| madars wrote:
| I just tried it and the tool started downloading Windows
| without giving me an option to select an .iso. It can
| download .iso's for burning them to DVD's but I don't
| think it can take dangling .iso's and make installation
| USBs out of them.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Ahh, fair enough. Thanks for clarifying.
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| Definitely weird, I installed windows about a month ago
| and it asked in the tool if I wished to install using an
| ISO.
| quyleanh wrote:
| Rufus is a light and effective tool when Windows user want to
| create USB bootable. In the past, I faced some issues about
| disk partition. The Windows Media Creation Tool usually created
| MBR partition but my disk was on GPT partition. Rufus did well
| on creating USB bootable with detail log. No need to type
| complicated command. No need to copy and edit files. Just
| select, select and press Start.
| odyslam wrote:
| I have always used Etcher[0] and I love it.
|
| [0] https://www.balena.io/etcher/
| muppetman wrote:
| I love that something that basically clones what "dd" can do is
| ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FOUR MEGABYTES. And people just accept
| that as normal. dd is 76k
|
| Imagine if the binary is 128MB how big the source code repo
| must be.
| zymhan wrote:
| I'll take a GUI that helps me triple-check I'm not dd-ing my
| root volume
| ______- wrote:
| I prefer Etcher over Rufus because there's very little to
| configure. It's easy to get the settings wrong in Rufus and it
| can make an ISO unbootable or unusable if you don't know what
| you're doing.
| cosmotic wrote:
| Etcher is easy to use but why on earth did they decide to make
| it an electron app?
| vxNsr wrote:
| Portability, RUFUS is windows only, most other tools require
| a lot more work to port. this one appears to be
| installable/usable on Win/Mac/Linux
|
| Personally I'm a fan of ventoy[0] though it doesn't appear to
| be installable on mac, but if you set it up on linux/windows
| you can just drop any iso you want onto it from any system
| and it'll work like a charm.
|
| [0] https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy
| larrybud wrote:
| Unfortunately, etcher has a long history of privacy violations
| which I find completely unacceptable (especially for an open
| source project!) https://forums.balena.io/t/serious-privacy-
| concerns-with-etc...
|
| As in, even when I turned off 'report usage statistics', it
| kept making outbound network connections. That was it for me...
| trust lost; uninstalled immediately.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Nice, how does the reliability compare to unetbootin ?
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| I get great mileage out of Etcher but I need Rufus to make a
| USB boot to Windows install.
| Lammy wrote:
| I tried this once but was annoyed at it being an Electron app,
| and sure enough it has analytics that spy on your usage by
| default including "information about the type of SD cards and
| USB drives": https://www.balena.io/docs/learn/more/collected-
| data/#balena...
| ______- wrote:
| Then flash it on an OS that's not connected to the Internet?
| That's what I do anyway. For some that's a pain, but over
| time I learned to have an OS that's airgapped for privacy
| reasons.
| Lammy wrote:
| Obviously it's not the end of the world for technical
| people who are in the habit of looking inside all new
| applications' settings and reading their privacy policies,
| but it means I could never recommend this app to anyone in
| good conscience knowing they will probably skip all of that
| and get spied on.
| eitland wrote:
| Lately all my usb thumb drives have been overheating when using
| any tool so last time I ended up using an external hard drive
| after burning through a number of thumb drives.
|
| Anyone has an idea how to artificially limit write speed besides
| running it over a USB 1 hub?
| wincy wrote:
| This happened to me until I bought a $35 Samsung usb-c drive
| that's got a metal enclosure. Stopped overheating.
| in9 wrote:
| why is creating a bootable USB stick so hard? By the look of the
| comments it's not something that tools can do reliably. How can I
| learn more about these types of issues? Booting an OS in general,
| that is.
| willis936 wrote:
| Rufus is nice and all, but these days I want a dozen different OS
| installs and live cds on not-a-dozen thumb drives. YUMI is my
| one-stop shop.
| radium3d wrote:
| Rufus has been my go-to for maybe decades now? It's one of those
| software that I keep a copy of in cold storage for the
| apocalypse.
| throwaway8581 wrote:
| Do not use Rufus to make Windows 10 install media. Rufus sucks
| for this purpose. It uses a weird partition scheme and custom
| bootloader that doesn't work with secure boot.
|
| You don't need any of this shit. Partition the drive as NTFS,
| mark the partition as active through Disk Management, and simply
| copy and paste the contents of the iso into the drive.
|
| For maximum compatibility, just use FAT32 instead of NTFS. The
| official images will fit in a FAT32 volume. If you have a custom
| image that's more than the 4GB max file size of FAT32, and your
| device doesn't support ntfs or exfat, then you can use a single
| command to split the wim file into multiple chunks as explained
| here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-
| hardware/manufactur...
| Bancakes wrote:
| Weird, for me Etcher doesn't make proper Windows bootables, and
| Rufus works flawlessly.
| x86ARMsRace wrote:
| > Rufus sucks for this purpose. It uses a weird partition
| scheme and custom bootloader that doesn't work with secure
| boot.
|
| Rufus also tends to format the drive strangely for *nix ISO
| files also. Last time I used it the write operation failed and
| I was stuck spending more time than necessary repairing the
| drive's partitions just to make it visible to my machine again.
| What compounds this is the documentation which can only be
| described as condescending and hostile.
|
| If memory serves, there's a section in the documentation's FAQ
| where the author spends a paragraph first telling you that it's
| good your having problems with your USB drive since it will
| teach you a lesson. I can never understand why some
| documentation writers feel the need to take digs at their
| users. Very odd.
| GranPC wrote:
| > The official images will fit in a FAT32 volume.
|
| Some official Windows 10 images, as of a few years ago, no
| longer fit on FAT32 volumes and need to be split. The official
| Microsoft tool does not work on Linux, so I use WoeUSB for
| that, which in my experience has worked fine with Secure Boot.
| system2 wrote:
| For simple windows installation isn't official Microsoft Media
| Creation Tool enough anyways? Rufus is a great tool to install
| ESXi, linux variants and other custom ISOs.
| bwat49 wrote:
| for some reason I can never get the media creation tool to
| work, it always downloads the ISO and then fails to write it
| to the USB with some ridiculously vague error code.
|
| rufus on the other hand always works without issue
| user3939382 wrote:
| It's weird that it's 2021 and when I have to go do a bare metal
| OS install I still make sure I have a DVD burner/drive because I
| can't 100% rely on installing from USB.
| ToFab123 wrote:
| Why can't you rely on installing ftom USB. It is many years,
| and many baremetal installs, since I had had access to a DVD
| drive. Curious about what kind of issues you are having with
| installing ftom USB
| rstat1 wrote:
| I can 2nd that. Maybe its just that I buy low quality USB
| drives, but I sometimes have go through the process a few
| times with different drives before getting one that actually
| works.
|
| Its a lot less hit or miss with Windows ISOs, but Linux ones
| can be VERY finicky.
| Tsiklon wrote:
| Any new system I've used since about 2011 has been able to boot
| reliably from USB. The only issues really come down to how the
| thumb drive is prepared.
|
| Usually `dd` is good enough for Linux/Unix disk images, and
| preparing an exFAT/NTFS thumb drive (your mileage may vary on
| whether exFAT is supported on your system) and copying the
| contents over with `rsync` works good for windows 7+ images
| floatingatoll wrote:
| I enjoyed reading the FAQ tonight, thanks for sharing this.
| polyterative wrote:
| balena etcher is also nice and easy https://www.balena.io/etcher/
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| This has been my go to for years now. It's especially useful
| whenever a friend or family member hits me up with a "computer
| question" that inevitably leads to "let's just reinstall whatever
| you had before" and I just need something quick that works.
| gumby wrote:
| How do ordinary people manage bung up their systems so badly
| that the thing to do is reinstall the whole thing?
|
| And this happens often enough that it's worth carrying around a
| tool to do this? I thought that by now systems would be
| adequately armoured against this.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| A non-representative, non-ordinary example.
|
| I ran distro upgrade on Fedora and it destroyed my grub. This
| is unusual, I ran several distro upgrades without issues, but
| this time it was different.
|
| I am no expert on grub and after spending 20 minutes trying
| out various solutions from the Internet I gave up and ran a
| quick reinstall. At least most of it was unattended and I had
| a clean system as a result.
| chihuahua wrote:
| Usually there is a recovery partition, and Windows 10 has a
| built-in function for a refresh/reinstall from the recovery
| partition. No USB drive needed. I did this recently over the
| phone for a relative's computer, but I forgot the exact name
| of this feature in the settings/control panel.
|
| In my case, it was necessary because the computer had not
| been used for months and was unable to connect to various
| websites, perhaps due to an out-of-date certificate. Rather
| than troubleshoot the issue, it was easier to just do the
| refresh.
| cricalix wrote:
| "Reset this PC" is one possibility that you're thinking of.
| Has options for saving or deleting all user-dir files,
| (afaik) always removes installed applications. Can also
| fully format the disk, and pull a clean copy of the
| installer from the 'net.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Within the last year on the same system I've had both windows
| 10 and a linux install commit suicide via update with no
| particularly special conditions. I later figured out what
| happened with the linux system only after some frustration
| and paving over it. It was a defect in a distro provided
| config file that resulted in the initramfs not having the
| proper support for the filesystem.
|
| With windows no automated repair could fix it and the whole
| system is so opaque that I will probably never know what
| happened other than it works after reinstall.
|
| Even if nothing ever goes wrong you will eventually need to
| install to a new system and usb drives are incredibly cheap
| with a 64GB USB 3.1 weighing in at all of $8-$12. You needn't
| carry it around just stick it in a desk drawer.
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(page generated 2021-05-07 23:01 UTC)