how to create multiboot usb w/ persistence for multiple OS

usb system-installation dual-boot persistence

Solution 1

You may want to check Easy2Boot. It's the most versatile and probably also best-documented tool for multiboot things. Specifically, it supports in particular

Boot multiple linux ISOs each with separate persistence files

[in addition, the author is also pretty helpful and really responsive even for in-depth questions] You could misuse that to reference the same casper-rw file for each of the systems.

For more details also see http://www.easy2boot.com/add-payload-files/linux-isos/linux-with-persistence/ and http://www.easy2boot.com/add-payload-files/persistence/

For similar topics, you might want to check the following links:

Solution 2

You can specify the persistence volume label in the boot parameters:

persistence persistence-label=volumelabel

As far as I know, this works with Debian. More info

Solution 3

An NTFS Easy2boot drive will boot multiple linux ISOs with persistence even if the linux being used does not support NTFS. You can even boot from an exFAT E2B drive to a linux distro that does not support exFAT. E2B creates a 4th partition on the E2B USB drive and 'maps' the ISO to that partition. When the ISO boots, it sees the 4th partition as having a CDFS filesystem and mounts it. It then gets the .sqfs file (or whatever it needs) from that CDFS partition. The same for the persistence file - it maps the persistence file to partition 3 of the E2B USB drive before booting to the ISO. Pretty much all linux ISOs should work with E2B. It also supports UEFI-booting (by converting each linux ISO to a .imgPTN partition image file and 'switching in' that partition.)

samrap

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

samrap over 1 year
EDIT

Problem Solved! For some reason I needed to put the background style before the ms vendor prefixes

So I launched my website last night and after sending the link out to some of the guys in chat I found that the background image is not displaying at all in Firefox. The path is correct. I went to Firefox and opened firebug, and it seems that Firefox is completely ignoring an entire section of my CSS document. This is not happening in Safari or Chrome. Here is the chunk that I am having a problem with:

(What is looks like in view page source in Safari and Chrome)
```
#header {
    width: 100%;
    min-height: 300px;
    overflow: hidden;

    filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src='./ios7.jpg',
    sizingMethod='scale');

    -ms-filter: "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src='./ios7.jpg',
    sizingMethod='scale')";

    background: url(/images/ios7.jpg) no-repeat fixed;
    webkit-background-size: 100% 100%;
    moz-background-size: 100% 100%;
    o-background-size: 100% 100%;
    background-size: 100% 100%;
}
```
(What I see in firebug)
```
#header {
    background-size: 100% 100%;
    min-height: 300px;
    overflow: hidden;
    width: 100%;
}
```
Not only is it ignoring the largest section of this style, but it rearranged the rest of it. I've never seen anything like this. You can view the site at samrapdev.com

I've come across a few other strange things Firefox seems to be doing such adding styles I never specified, for example:
```
.mainNav ul li:hover {
    background: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.2);
}
```
Is changed in firefox to:
```
.mainNav ul li:hover {
    background: none repeat scroll 0 0 rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.2);
}
```
What is going on here?
- j08691 over 10 years
  
  Side note, I'm getting a repeated TypeError: listElm[index] is undefined listElm[index].fadeIn(900); error in all browsers.
- samrap over 10 years
  
  Yeah I was aware of that error and trying to figure out why it is occurring. Both variables are defined and the function works as expected @j08691
- Ennui over 10 years
  
  firefox is just showing you the default styles. you used the background shorthand property but only specified background-color so firefox filled in the rest of the defaults (shorthand background property stands for image repeat attachment position-x position-y color).
- samrap over 10 years
  
  Okay thank you I wasn't aware Firefox did that @Ennui
- Admin almost 9 years
  
  If you're talking casper then you're not really talking about multiple OSes - just Debian initramfs and different roots. Still, the simplest approach would target a UEFI-only system on which you would just need a kernel and (optional if the kernel's initial root is compiled in) initramfs image for each. The casper file-system you're talking about is a squashfs compressed mountable root filesystem - and that's how most live-systems do it because the squashfs driver offers native kernel VFS mounting of a highly compressed fs. Anyway, with grub and similar it gets much more difficult.
- Admin almost 9 years
  
  well i had heard that you could swap the casper rw file with a partition for greater storage volume and was wondering if it could be done with multiple installs of different linux based os's and how to go about doing it
- Admin almost 9 years
  
  The casper system works by mounting two disks - filesystem layers - the first is the squashfs file (on your live disk somewhere called bla.sfs, likely) and it is read-only. The second is writable filesystem mounted atop it - I forget how Debian does it but I think it can be selected in /etc/fstab. Basically anything in the second overshadows the first - usually using whitelists - and so the user sees a joined version of the two. You can use the same sfs file and overlay it with different rw layers for entirely different results. aufs, overlayfs, are terrible performers, though.
samrap over 10 years

I don't see why I'm getting that error. Both variables are defined
samrap over 10 years

Great answer. I still need to figure out why I'm getting the JavaScript error but this cleared up a lot of questions
Lolorz12 almost 9 years

it looks like 4gb persistence is the max sadly on fat32 according to some documentation on their site, something not mentioned on the other tools i had read about however, this is a great tool! too bad it sounds like ntfs has issues with other os's compatibility wise as mac can only read without help and not all distros have support for ntfs it sounds like
doktor5000 almost 9 years

Which distro does not have support for NTFS? Read support has been in the kernel for ages, and read-write support provided by ntfs-3g, which is in all current distros. Apart from that it should be possible to not use a file for persistence, but a whole partition on the multiboot drive. See askubuntu.com/questions/138356/… or e.g. pendrivelinux.com/create-a-larger-than-4gb-casper-partition
Lolorz12 almost 9 years

oh cool, I'd been perusing a few articles and some other sources of info after reading up on easy2boot should have checked the actual kernel support doh! so much misleading info out there even though support was added in what, 2006? saw a few saying there were issues creating new files or something even from some source dated at 2 years ago