Making a bootable USB, with nothing on it..

Want to install linux? Maybe try out a live Operating System? Need to use some system tools outside of your drive’s system? You’ll be needing a bootable USB drive.

First things first. Making a BOOTABLE USB. CHAPTER 1.2 – from LINUX, with VENTOY, from Terminal

PRE: To install anything anywhere these days you oughta need to learn to know to figure out.. )) .. how to boot a computer from something that has an installer of what you would want to install. It used to be floppies 30 years ago, multiple cds 15 years ago, USB drives these days. My guess is whoever will predict what it might be in 15 years will be very rich..

STEP 1: NOW you need a USB stick (commonly referred to as “thumb drive”). PHYSICALLY you will have to buy one, no joke, save $ if you have to. But yu;re going to make it your own. That is, put anything that make the most sense and that is useful. I’m saying this so we get something of 64GB or maybe higher considering that an average distro these days takes 2.5 GB and upwords.. One Linux Kali is 11 GB, Medicat is more than 22 GB, I’m sure there are others.. We’ll do with just the 8 GB (16 in my case) stick.

UPDATE: It just occurred to me – get one with a USB-C option. Built-in or with an adapter to USB type A. We’ll be looking into making cool toys with cellphones too. Later..

SIDENOTE 1: If you’re thinking about enrolling into any kind of cyberdojo undergraduate kumite, there’s no two ways about paying money for yer gear. Per https://apps.senecapolytechnic.ca/ssos/findOutline.do?schoolCode=0s867160&termCode=20251&subjectCode=OPS105 the required supplies for ONE *NIX course are:

USB flash memory, 8 GB minimum
2.5′ Solid State Drive minimum 240 GB with case
PC or Laptop with minimum system specifications according to program system requirements
Wi-Fi Internet access according to program system requirements

AND MINIMUM system specifications according to program system requirements (aka Computer Requirements) are:

16 GB RAM minimum
256 GB SSD Hard Drive (500+ GB would be better)
Quad-core i7 2.4GHz or better
Video card (2GB RAM minimum/4GB RAM recommended)
Webcam

Funny, no one mentioned proper amount enthusiasm and willingness to get burned, so here we go.

STEP 2: get VENTOY

SIDENOTE 2: I’ve been around, I’ve had YUMI, RUFUS, UNETBOOTIN, BALENA ETCHER.. Explore as much as you want, for now it’ll be Ventoy. What it does really is partitions the drive into a smaller bootable sector and another bigger one wher we just throw our distros freely. CTRL+C, CTRL+V, it is that simple.

I say “get” because you can 1) DOWNLOAD a tar.gz archive from ventoy’s website https://sourceforge.net/projects/ventoy/files/v1.1.04/ventoy-1.1.04-linux.tar.gz/download, and 2) EXTRACT the archive:

taco@T937:~$ pwd
/home/taco
taco@T937:~$ cd Downloads
taco@T937:~/Downloads$ ls ventoy*
ventoy-1.1.00-linux.tar.gz  ventoy-1.1.04-linux.tar.gz  ventoy-1.1.04-livecd.iso

ventoy-1.1.00:
boot                    log.txt  tool            VentoyGUI.aarch64   VentoyGUI.x86_64  VentoyWeb.sh
CreatePersistentImg.sh  plugin   ventoy          VentoyGUI.i386      VentoyPlugson.sh  WebUI
ExtendPersistentImg.sh  README   Ventoy2Disk.sh  VentoyGUI.mips64el  VentoyVlnk.sh
taco@T937:~/Downloads$ tar -xf ventoy-1.1.04-linux.tar.gz

*where pwd – is your place on the drive

*cd – is you change into the directory where dowloaded *.tar.gz file is: \Downloads

*tar -xf – you extract the full contents into a subdirectory

THEN you 2.1) STICK YOUR DRIVE INTO THE USB PORT and find out where your drive is with lsblk. In this example it’s “sdd”, yours can be sdWHATEVER, 2.2) get into the unpacked directory and 3) run Ventoy2Disk.sh (I hope at this point you’ve realized there’s no turning back) with arguments (attributes?) -i and specifying the path /dev/sdYOURDRIVE

STEP 3: INTALL VENTOY onto the disk:

taco@T937:~/Downloads$ lsblk
...
sdd      8:48   1  15.3G  0 disk 
├─sdd1   8:49   1   512K  0 part 
├─sdd4   8:52   1     2G  0 part 
├─sdd5   8:53   1   1.1G  0 part 
├─sdd6   8:54   1    16M  0 part 
└─sdd7   8:55   1 882.5M  0 part 
...
taco@T937:~/Downloads$ cd ventoy-1.1.04
taco@T937:~/Downloads/ventoy-1.1.04$ sudo ./Ventoy2Disk.sh -i /dev/sdd
[sudo] password for taco: 

**********************************************
      Ventoy: 1.1.04  x86_64
      longpanda [email protected]
      https://www.ventoy.net
**********************************************

Disk : /dev/sdd
Model: SCSI DISK (scsi)
Size : 15 GB
Style: MBR


Attention:
You will install Ventoy to /dev/sdd.
All the data on the disk /dev/sdd will be lost!!!

Continue? (y/n) y

All the data on the disk /dev/sdd will be lost!!!
Double-check. Continue? (y/n) y

Create partitions on /dev/sdd by parted in MBR style ...
Done
Wait for partitions ...
partition exist OK
create efi fat fs /dev/sdd2 ...
mkfs.fat 4.2 (2021-01-31)
success
Wait for partitions $vPART1 and $vPART2 ...
/dev/sdd1 exist OK
/dev/sdd2 exist OK
partition exist OK
Format partition 1 /dev/sdd1 ...
mkexfatfs 1.3.0
Creating... done.
Flushing... done.
File system created successfully.
mkexfatfs success
writing data to disk ...
sync data ...
esp partition processing ...

Install Ventoy to /dev/sdd successfully finished.

POST: It really is about making A BOOTABLE USB FLASH DRIVE WITH NOTHING ON IT. yet. If you boot up and select the device as your flash drive, it’ll just give you an empty Ventoy menu. That’s correct, but not right. Next chapter we’ll be packing some stuff on it..

SIDENOTE 2: Possible error might occur when running Ventoy2Disk.sh. I don’t remember exactly what the message said but just make sure the script is executable first. Other *.sh files fall into this category and so is running them with elevated privileges. Otherwise, no dice. List the files with details. See by adding executable parameter it put an “x” at the end of user, group and owner. For example:

taco@T937:~/Downloads/ventoy-1.1.04$ ls -la
total 232
..
-rw-r--r--.  1 taco taco  1778 Feb 21 22:18 Ventoy2Disk.sh
..
taco@T937:~/Downloads/ventoy-1.1.04$ ./Ventoy2Disk.sh
bash: ./Ventoy2Disk.sh: Permission denied
taco@T937:~/Downloads/ventoy-1.1.04$ sudo ./Ventoy2Disk.sh
sudo: ./Ventoy2Disk.sh: command not found
taco@T937:~/Downloads/ventoy-1.1.04$ sudo chmod +x Ventoy2Disk.sh
taco@T937:~/Downloads/ventoy-1.1.04$ ls -la
total 232
..
-rwxr-xr-x.  1 taco taco  1778 Feb 21 22:18 Ventoy2Disk.sh
..
taco@T937:~/Downloads/ventoy-1.1.04$ sudo ./Ventoy2Disk.sh

**********************************************
      Ventoy: 1.1.04  x86_64
      longpanda [email protected]
      https://www.ventoy.net
**********************************************

Usage:  Ventoy2Disk.sh CMD [ OPTION ] /dev/sdX
  CMD:
   -i  install Ventoy to sdX (fails if disk already installed with Ventoy)
   -I  force install Ventoy to sdX (no matter if installed or not)
   -u  update Ventoy in sdX
   -l  list Ventoy information in sdX

  OPTION: (optional)
   -r SIZE_MB  preserve some space at the bottom of the disk (only for install)
   -s/-S       enable/disable secure boot support (default is enabled)
   -g          use GPT partition style, default is MBR (only for install)
   -L          Label of the 1st exfat partition (default is Ventoy)
   -n          try non-destructive installation (only for install)

taco@T937:~/Downloads/ventoy-1.1.04$

SKILLS TO SHOW OFF:
Changing permissions – making executable, creating a bootable medium, running scripts

COMMANDS KNOWN:
pwd, cd, tar -xf, sudo chmod +x, lsblk

Tec Tac Toc

CHAPTER 1 – Making a BOOTABLE USB

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