Update: I managed to build wimboot after cherry-picking some patches.
this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2025
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Credit to you. Many complained, but you went out of your way to solve the problems. The output here has real value. Thanks.
Thanks for the thankless work. I hope that the changes will be accepted upstream.
If not, rebrand and distribute. This is the most important thing to this project.
I'm still a huge fan of Ventoy, but lately I have been finding more and more issues with it.
So I decided to investigate using a Raspberry Pi Zero with a USB adapter to create a virtual drive:
It's very wonky and manual at the moment, but I have managed to boot all Linux ISOs successfully so far. Unfortunately, I think only ISOhybrid works OOB, so Windows ISO do not work. I have found some scripts to take Windows ISO and make them ISOhybrid, but haven't gotten around to doing that yet.
I think it should be doable to package this nicely.
If only booting Linux distros, consider GLIM instead: https://github.com/thias/glim
Thanks for sharing! I never heard of that before
Are there any instructions on how to build this all to get the ventoy installer binary that can replace upstream? Or is the project not up to this stage yet? I can go without Windows and FreeBSD support.
On Linux installation is done through a series of scripts and vtoycli. I haven't worked on that yet, but there's build scripts there that should do the trick, but since they build it for multiple architectures, you'll have to run just the stuff for your arch (probably x86_64).
sth like:
cd vtoycli/fat_io_lib/release
gcc -specs "/usr/local/musl/lib/musl-gcc.specs" -O2 -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 fat*.c -c
ar -rc libfat_io_64.a *.o
cd ../..
gcc -specs "/usr/local/musl/lib/musl-gcc.specs" -Os -static -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -Ifat_io_lib/include fat_io_lib/lib/libfat_io_64.a *.c -o vtoycli_64
# Optional
strip --strip-all vtoycli_64
Do I have to build all other parts myself before then? (I'm trying to package it for Nix so that other people can also build it more easily)
Pretty much. I do have some releases, but considering Nix's philosophy you probably should. Ventoy-CPIO should build fine, if the right toolchains and dietlibc are in PATH. Ventoy-boot relies on overlay mounts though, so it might not build within Nix.
Thanks! I will try and report the results back to you.
What is the ventoy blob thing and why is it important?
TLDR: There's binaries instead of source code in the repo, which makes it hard to near-impossible to verify what it's doing. And the instructions for building those is lacking.
What's ventoy?
a tool that allows multiple isos to be on one live usb, while the usb still works as a usb
One boot USB to rule them all. Just copy ISOs to it, and boot to a menu of ISOs.
A tool to make bootable Live USBs out of operating system ISOs.
I think that's not quite right, otherwise you could say that Rufus is the same. Ventoy is a Live USB tool that allows you to drag and drop ISOs onto a storage device and boot them without needing to image the device at all. It has its own interface that it boots into, that lets you select which ISO to then boot up.
Thank you for your work on this! It's highly appreciated!
I'm about as broke as it gets currently, but are there ways to send money your way in case someone who's able to comes across this?
Focus on yourself first. I do have a Ko-Fi, but I don't promote it much.
So in short, these seven components are what makes the Ventoy blob, am I getting this right?
https://www.iodd.shop/all-products
Much better
The current problem with ventoy is that proprietary blobs are essentially an unauditable possible security backdoor.
This product is entirely proprietary, including the hardware, and even worse.
All flash drives are proprietary as well what's the difference
They are not explicitly designed to boot ISO's?
Also, price. I'm not gonna pay quadruple the price for something that can be done entirely in software.
Ventoy does not emulate a CDROM it just boots it via grub
I never got uefi images booting properly on those grub multi boot utility drives. Granted the last time I bothered with it was like 10 years ago now
I haven't had any issues with Ventoy, everything I've attempted to boot works. Doesn't matter how it does it if it works.
Interesting. Sadly it only supports FAT32, NTFS and EXFAT with no Linux filesystems.
And Ventoy is free. It's hard to argue with free.
Yeah that's only for the partition that contains your ISOs.
You can make another ext4 partition on it if you wanted, it just has to not be the first partition on the disk.
Oh and the encryption feature is dumb dont even bother with it
Also you still have to buy your flash drive so why not invest in something better
Yeah, bought the st300 after having repeated issues with ventoy not properly mounting disk images causing multiple Linux distro installs to fail. My st300 might be one of my best investments as a technician just for how seamless and simple it is to use.
I never got uefi images booting properly on those grub multi boot utility drives. Granted the last time I bothered with it was like 10 years ago now since ive had multiple different iodd enclosures since then.
Got over my laziness
dd will do
stopped using Ventoy
suggesting others to do so too.
Well you can ditch etcher or rufus with dd, but not ventoy since i carry around like 5 distros in a usb
Can you use dd to create multiboot USB drives? Even the link you shared lists Ventoy as an option.
"Can you use dd to create multiboot USB drives?"
No. But in my case that's just a minor inconvenience considering the infrequency of having to use a live USB. And at work I just use separate USBs for wiping drives and OS installs. I much prefer the peace of mind that comes with knowing there's no Ventoy blob that could potentially infect all its installed operating systems with malware.
In any case, it seems it is possible to manually make a multiboot USB drive manually. Haven't tried it yet though.
"Even the link you shared lists Ventoy as an option."
I know. I simply linked that website because it's where I learned dd from and because for novices it might be less overwhelming than the Arch Wiki.
Clearly you are not the target audience. For IT pros and tech enthusiasts regularly rebuilding machines and running numerous diagnostic tools from boot, the ability to quickly bootstrap a machines is a massive timesaver. dd is slower and may mean carrying around a lot of usb sticks, something these people all graduated from.