How do I put Multiple live distro's on a USB flash drive.

[tux]

On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 8:27 AM, tux<tux at pantherfish.com>  wrote:
>> >  I have an 8GB flash drive that I would like to put multiple Fedora Live
>> >  CD's on. (KDE,Gnome,LXDE,XFCE, FEL, Games and Edu,Third party spins, etc. )
>> >
>> >  Does anyone have any advice on how to do this

On 02/01/2010 09:03 AM, Don Quixote wrote:
> I think it should be straightforward to do this, but you'll need to do
> it carefully and methodically.  I do something like this with my
> VirtualBox disk images.  I put them in physical partitions for
> efficiency, but sometimes copy them out to regular, uncompressed files
> then convert them to sparse images then compress them with bzip2 for
> backup.  I works real well, but is tedious and error-prone.  I need to
> automate it or Imma gonna overwrite my /home with some WinXP disk
> image.
>
> Anyway what you need is a Master Boot Record on the first 512-byte
> sector of your USB stick.  Make one small ext2 primary partition for
> /boot, then a logical partition for each of your live CDs.
>
> The MBR only allows four primary partitions, but only /boot needs to
> be a primary.  So you can make one primary, then one extended.  Within
> the extended you can make as many logical partitions as you like.
>
> The primary and extended partitions are stored directly in the MBR,
> towards the end of that first sector.  The extended is divided up into
> logical partitions, with their positions and sizes specified in a
> linked list that is also inside the extended.  I don't know the
> details but I would imagine each partition link element is just before
> each logical partition.
>
> Use "ls -s" to get the size of each of your LiveCD images in
> kilobytes.  If they are compressed, decompress them first.
>
> Multiply the size in kilobytes by two to get the size in 512-byte sectors.
>
> When you partition your stick, use GNU parted - NOT GParted!  Not the
> GUI partitioner, just parted, the command-line tool.  Set the size
> unit to sectors.  Use parted's help to get the exact syntax but I
> think you just use:
>
>     unit s
>
> Create a /boot partition as I said with ext2.  I don't think it needs
> to be very big - a megabyte or two would be plenty.  It won't contain
> a kernel as /boots usually do.
>
> Create a logical partition for each of your LiveCDs.  Make each
> partition EXACTLY the same number of sectors as the LiveCD image that
> will go into it.  It's OK if the partition is bigger - it just wastes
> some space.  Make sure it's not smaller.  It's really best to be
> careful and methodical and get the size exactly the same.
>
> You'll need to figure out the /dev entry for your USB stick.  Chances
> are that it is /dev/sdb though - the second SCSI drive.  USB Mass
> Storage is built on the SCSI Architectural Model.  /dev/sda would be
> your boot disk if you're using SATA, SAS or Parallel SCSI.  If your
> boot disk is /dev/hda, then it is Parallel IDE.  If that's the case
> then your USB stick is probably /dev/sda not sdb.
>
> *** Get It Right Or You'll Be Sorry! ***
>
> If your stick is /dev/sdb, then the stick's /boot partition is
> /dev/sdb1.  Your LiveCD partitions are numbered starting with 5,
> because they are logical partitions - /dev/sdb5, /dev/sdb6, /dev/sdb7
> and so on.  Partition numbers 1 through 4 are reserved for primary and
> extended partitions.
>
> Now use the dd command to copy a LiveCD image into a partition:
>
>     $ dd if=FedoraLive.iso of=/dev/sdb5 bs=512
>
> That copies the FedoraLive.iso input file to the first logical
> partition as the output file with a block size of 512 bytes.  Most
> storage devices have physical sector sizes of 512 bytes, so you are
> required to read or write them in integral multiples of 512.
>
> There's a couple pieces remaining though that I can't explain for you,
> but I can give you some hints:
>
> It*should*  work to set up grub to chainload each of the LiveCD
> partitions. That should work just the same as if you were booting MS
> Windows.  Grub would load the first sector out of the desired
> partition then run the boot loader found therein.
>
> What I don't have a clue about though is that booting a CD uses a
> package called ISOLINUX.  You don't want ISOLINUX to boot a USB stick.
>   There is another package for that, but you'll have to dig it up
> somehow as I don't remember.  Basically what you need to do is replace
> the ISOLINUX on each partition with whatever the equivalent is for a
> USB stick.
>
> If I recall correctly the way ISOLINUX works is that it finds a Linux
> filesystem image in a single file on the CD, then it loads it as if it
> were a filesystem on a real hard disk.  You should be able to use that
> same image file, but you will have to use some other software than
> ISOLINUX to load it.
>
> Hope That Help!
>
> Don Quixote
> -- Don Quixote de la Mancha quixote at dulcineatech.com
> http://www.dulcineatech.com Dulcinea Technologies Corporation: Software
> of Elegance and Beauty.

I have been experimenting with grub4dos. I have a single fat32 partition 
and have been able to successfully boot gparted live 4.5-2 by putting 
the files from the cd image into the /gparted folder on the usb drive 
and creating a /menu.lst file with the following entry:

title Gparted 0.4.5-2 Partition Editor
root (hd0,0)
kernel /gparted/vmlinuz1 live-media-path=/gparted bootfrom=/dev/sd 
boot=live union=aufs noswap noprompt vga=789 ip=frommedia
initrd /gparted/initrd1.img

On the 64 bit KDE live cd there is this entry the /isolinux/isolinux.cfg 
file:

label linux0
   menu label Boot
   kernel vmlinuz0
   append initrd=initrd0.img root=live:CDLABEL=Fedora-12-x86_64-Live-KDE 
rootfstype=auto ro liveimg quiet  rhgb rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_MD noiswmd

How would I convert this to work with grub4dos?

Is it possible to copy the vmlinuz0, initrd0.img the osmin.img and 
splashfs.img to a folder on the drive and create a grub entry for it?

I would like to create a separate folder for each spin and add an 
appropriate grub entry for each one.


Thanks
Tux