Introduction to Multiboot USB Drives
A multiboot USB drive is a USB drive that contains multiple operating systems, allowing you to boot and run multiple operating systems from a single USB drive.
This is useful for a number of scenarios, such as:
- Testing different operating systems
- Installing an operating system on multiple computers
- Carrying your favorite operating systems with you on the go
In this presentation, we will cover the process of creating a multiboot USB drive using a script.
Prerequisites
Before you can use the script to create a multiboot USB drive, you will need to:
- Have a USB drive with sufficient capacity to hold all of the operating systems that you want to include
- Have the files for each operating system that you want to include on the USB drive
- Know the device name of the USB drive (e.g.
/dev/sdb
)
The Script
Here is the script that you can use to create a multiboot USB drive:
#!/bin/bash # Get the device name of the USB drive echo "Enter the device name of the USB drive (e.g. /dev/sdb):" read device # Make sure the device name is correct echo "You entered $device. Is this correct? (y/n)" read confirm if [ "$confirm" != "y" ]; then echo "Exiting script." exit fi # Unmount the USB drive umount $device # Create a new GPT partition table parted $device mklabel gpt # Create a new partition for the multiboot bootloader parted $device mkpart primary fat32 1MiB 551MiB # Set the boot flag on the new partition parted $device set 1 boot on # Create a new partition for the operating systems parted $device mkpart primary ext4 551MiB 100% # Format the boot partition with FAT32 mkfs.vfat -F32 "${device}1" # Format the operating system partition with ext4 mkfs.ext4 "${device}2" # Mount the boot partition mkdir boot mount "${device}1" boot # Mount the operating system partition mkdir os mount "${device}2" os # Install the multiboot bootloader grub-install --target=i386-pc --boot-directory=boot $device # Generate the configuration file for the multiboot bootloader cat > boot/grub/grub.cfg <<EOF # Set the default boot entry set default=0 # Set the timeout in seconds set timeout=5 # Create a menu entry for each operating system menuentry "Operating System 1" { set root=(hd0,1) chainloader +1 } menuentry "Operating System 2" { set root=(hd0,1) chainloader +1 } # Add additional menu entries for each additional operating system EOF # Copy the operating system files to the operating system partition cp -r /path/to/operating/system/1/* os/ cp -r /path/to/operating/system/2/* os/ # Add additional cp commands for each additional operating system # Unmount the USB drive umount boot umount os # Remove the mount directories rmdir boot rmdir os echo "Multiboot USB drive created successfully!"
To use this script, simply replace “/path/to/operating/system/1” and “/path/to/operating/system/2” with the paths to the directories containing the files for the operating systems that you want to include on the USB drive. You can also add additional menu entries and cp commands for each additional operating system that you want to include.