Emergency Repair disk

Lounge Tips & Tricks
1

See update below for 26.04 Resolute issues. Loop mount by grub also does not work for 26.04.

While I normally use grub to loopmount ISO and have most ISO on every larger drive, I recently created a flash drive with repair ISO.

The number of ISO depends on size of flash drive. This is what I have. I renamed noble to Lnoble to remind me it is Lubuntu as I normally use Kubuntu. This list uses about 20GB on a 64GB flash drive.

— /media/fred/Ventoy ------------------------------------------------------------------
/..
5.4 GiB [############] Win11_22H2_English_x64v2.iso
3.2 GiB [###### ] Lnoble-desktop-amd64.iso
3.1 GiB [###### ] HBCD_Phttps://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/733982/expanding-a-drive-partition-without-data-lossE_x64.iso
2.6 GiB [##### ] Fedora-KDE-Desktop-Live-42-1.1.x86_64.iso
2.5 GiB [##### ] boot-repair-disk-64bit (2).iso
914.0 MiB [# ] systemrescue-11.02-amd64.iso
778.0 MiB [# ] debian-trixie-DI-rc2-amd64-netinst.iso
580.0 MiB [# ] gparted-live-1.7.0-8-amd64.iso
363.5 MiB [ ] EasyRE Professional for Windows 10.iso
14.0 MiB [ ] supergrub2-classic-2.06s4-x86_64_efi-CD.iso
7.4 MiB [ ] refind-flashdrive-0.14.2.img
384.0 KiB [ ] /.Trash-1000

Others may have some more suggestions. Not sure all the ones I now have are most recent verions, but just copying ISO to Ventoy partition is an easy way to update.

https://www.ventoy.net/en/doc_grub2boot.html
https://www.ventoy.net/en/doc_github_ci.html

I downloaded Ventoy into a folder /ISO and extracted into sub-folder. And had a flash drive I want to use, already erased mounted as /dev/sdb.
this was the command I used.
fred@z170-noble:~/ISO/ventoy-1.1.07$ sudo bash Ventoy2Disk.sh -i -g /dev/sdb

Just created new flash drive, it did needs extracting directly into folder in /home, needs executable permissions and flash drive must be unmounted.

note version now 1.1.12, if newer you have to change. Not sure if issue was sub-folder or that sub-folder was a link to a data partition and installer could not follow link.
fred@z170-noble:~$ cd ventoy-1.1.12/ #had to extract to folder in /home not sub-directory,
fred@z170-noble:~/ventoy-1.1.12$ sudo bash Ventoy2Disk.sh -i -g /dev/sdb

With 26.04 Ventoy -1.1.12 does not currently work. See 26.04 Release notes.
I was able to download 1.1.10 as mentioned in release notes and that did work. See history releases on main Ventoy site.
https://www.ventoy.net/en/downloadold.html

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2

Thanks for your list @oldfred

I have a few similar ISO files on a Ventoy USB:-

Ubuntu 24.04
Lubuntu 24.10
refind-flashdrive.img
efi-shell.img
Ubuntu 25.04

Plus two more different choices
dr-parted - alternative to gparted
Clonezilla

I hope a few others chime in with suggestions - it should be an interesting topic

2 Likes
3

Thanks for the tips for multiboot USB drives and their content :slight_smile:

Today I usually store and update iso files in my main computer. I flash them to an SSD when needed (I use SSDs as temporary devices).

Exception: Clonezilla (legacy boot and UEFI boot versions on separate USB sticks), which I use regularly without urgent need to get the newest version.

4

Just curious. Do you re-use USB sticks? or actual external SSD drives?

If re-use USB sticks, could you please share the process by which you “flash/burn” your images onto the stick?

1 Like
5

I don’t want to steal @Sudodus 's thunder, but my money is on this application
:laughing:

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6

I have some old USB sticks, but they are slow. Now I use SSDs, most of them 2.5 inch size (the form factor to replace HDDs for laptops). They have been cheap for some time and can be used via a USB3 to SATA cable, and they are much faster and more reliable than USB sticks.

As @tea-for-one guessed, I use my own tool, mkusb to create USB boot drives, it works for many mass storage devices, USB sticks, memory cards, SSDs, HDDs.

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