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I want to make a flash drive with lots of bootable things on it, a toolkit of sorts. The list of things that I want to boot on it so far it

  • Hirens Boot Disk
  • Backtrack Linux
  • Knoppix STD
  • Ophcrack XP
  • Ophcrack Vista/7
  • Spinrite
  • regular linux (preferably centOS)
  • MRI Customizer
  • and use the rest of the space for regular storage, even available in windows.

The disk is 64 GB so space will not be a problem and I should have plenty left for storage. My question is, how can I make all of these things bootable on one disk. I know perfectly well on separate disks, but not one disk.

Should I make separate partitions? Should I use grub and try to chainload a second tier or programs? Should I make a swap partition for the linuxes to play with when they're being use?

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    This question seems to have been answered over at Ask Ubuntu Here
    – 50-3
    Sep 9, 2013 at 23:16

2 Answers 2

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YUMI works great ! Download YUMI!

YUMI (Your Universal Multiboot Installer), is the successor to MultibootISOs. It can be used to create a Multiboot USB Flash Drive containing multiple operating systems, antivirus utilities, disc cloning, diagnostic tools, and more. Contrary to MultiBootISO's which used grub to boot ISO files directly from USB, YUMI uses syslinux to boot extracted distributions stored on the USB device, and reverts to using grub to Boot Multiple ISO files from USB, if necessary.

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  • does it help me figure out/figure out for me the grub entries? I have had a look at some sites using straight grub to boot extracted ISO images. Pretty deep stuff
    – PsychoData
    Sep 10, 2013 at 18:26
  • turns out this just does all of the entries FOR me. WAAY EASIER then Unetbootin. Plus Unetbootin didnt support everything I wanted to put on
    – PsychoData
    Jan 23, 2014 at 13:46
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Answer from Ask Ubuntu

This is not my content - content taken from link above to avoid link rot

Creating and installing Multiple Distros in to USB / Pendrive involves two parts:-

"After googling around for few days i found this useful script from www.multicd.tuxfamily.org. Multicd.sh is a shell script written by maybeway36 which enables two or more Live Linux distros / utilities to be able to boot from single CD/DVD. It is really very simple to create multi Live Linux distro in a single disc. Create a folder in your home folder and name it as multicd. Put all the live Linux iso images along with multicd.sh script inside multicd folder. Close the window. Open terminal and give the following commands

cd multicd
chmod +x multicd*.sh
sudo ./multicd*.sh

Above commands will execute multicd.sh. While executing, this script will download few packages from Internet and make a new iso image called multicd.iso for you inside multicd folder. Check the size of multicd.iso image file. If it exceeds more than 700 mb then you must insert DVD to write it. Choose burn image option from your favorite image burning software to write multicd.iso file. Upon reboot, with the CD/DVD present inside CD/DVD drive, new GRUB will display list of live distros available in the disc. Choose your favorite one to login...

Note: When you download any Linux iso image from internet it will look like this "ubuntu-9.04-desktop-i386" but this has to be renamed as ubuntu.iso (inside multicd folder). Presently this script supports 20 live distros. List of Live Linux distros supported in this script are given below (and the names accepted by this script are on the right side of each distro)."

There's a list of distro's on the blog page.

  • Installing Multiple Live distro in to a USB / Pendrive.

UNetbootin Install UNetbootin allows you to create bootable Live USB drives for Ubuntu, Fedora, and other Linux distributions without burning a CD. It runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. You can either let UNetbootin download one of the many distributions supported out-of-the-box for you, or supply your own Linux .iso file if you've already downloaded one or your preferred distribution isn't on the list.

Support amongst others: Ubuntu (and official derivatives) 8.04 LTS 9.10 10.04 LTS 10.10 11.04 Daily CD Images, Fedora 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, Rawhide and lots lots more.

If you look at them image you can choose distro's or download ISO's yourself and add them or add a custom. And you can set this up on a hard disc or a USB flash drive.

enter image description here

I hope it is enough information but there is a lot more info on this blog.

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  • 1
    will this even work with stuff that isnt a linux liveCD?
    – PsychoData
    Sep 9, 2013 at 23:19
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    I'm unsure what you mean? a liveCD is just a diskimage
    – 50-3
    Sep 9, 2013 at 23:21
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    I mean like Hirens Boot Disk or Ophcrack or spinrite. Spinrite isnt even linux based
    – PsychoData
    Sep 9, 2013 at 23:22
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    Not sure if it will or not - best to try yourself
    – 50-3
    Sep 9, 2013 at 23:31
  • @PsychoData I can also see what your trying to learn based up on the packages you want, My personal advise is you will learn so much more if you have a 64gb bootable version of Arch linux (Nothing else) and learn from there - eg. compile your own tools learn to use python, pearl, bash, ect... use packages like Black arch....
    – 50-3
    Sep 9, 2013 at 23:55

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