Ventoy

Related articles
Multiboot USB drive
Ventoy
is a free and open source tool to create drives that allow you to select and boot any EFI, IMG, ISO, VHD(x), or WIM files stored on a rewritable partition on the drive.
Most types of operating systems are supported (Windows/WinPE/Linux/ChromeOS/Unix/VMware/Xen...), see
the full list
.
Installation
Install
the
ventoy
AUR
package.
Known issues
Ventoy might contain backdoors or other malicious code:
The author(s?) long refused to react on questions about the source code for the precompiled code inside their git repository.
They long refused to react on questions about the security risks.
When an answer was finally given, it boiled down to a simple "There is no reason to assume that we would have placed malware inside."
Again after a really long time the authors finally mentioned what other source code they used to generate some−but not all−of the pre-compiled code. They did not mention the build methods and refused to prove that this really was the used source code.
The real identities of the authors is unknown.
See
Wikipedia:Ventoy#Concerns over software security and validity of open source claim
for more information.
For alternatives, take a look at the
Multiboot USB drive#Automated tools
.
Usage
Warning
The drive used will be erased and all its existing data will be lost after setup.
There are three utilities for setting up the media:
/opt/ventoy/Ventoy2Disk.sh
, which is a shell script to be run from the command line.
/opt/ventoy/VentoyGUI.x86_64
, which is a graphical application.
xauth
or a similar application is needed to escalate to root if the application is not started with root permissions.
Opening
file:///opt/ventoy/WebUI/index.html
with a web browser.
The same utilities can be used for upgrading the Ventoy installation on the drive.
Ventoy creates two partitions on the drive. Their default names are Ventoy and VTOYEFI. The Ventoy partition is to store the bootable images (iso files), and any other data. VTOYEFI is for the Ventoy binaries.
To add images from which you can boot,
mount
the first partition and copy the images over.
Tip
You can copy the images anywhere on your Ventoy partition. There is no need to put them in the root directory or keep them together.
Use without installing
If you just want to create a multi-boot drive, you can simply download the pre-built executable at the
GitHub releases page
. You need
dosfstools
to be installed because a vfat partition is created by using
mkfs.vfat
. After verifying the sha256sum and unpacking, you can display the included CLI's
[1]
help page by running the shell script without any arguments:
# ./ventoy-
VERSION
/Ventoy2Disk.sh
You can afterwards upgrade the drive for future versions by following a similar procedure. Downloading a NEWER-VERSION, verifying the sha256sum, unpacking, running
# ./ventoy-
NEWER-VERSION
/Ventoy2Disk.sh
and following the on screen help message.
As an alternative to the shell script mentioned here, a
GTK
/
qt
[2]
, and a
web
UI
[3]
, are also included.
Tips and tricks
What version is already installed?
With
Ventoy2Disk.sh
utility mentioned earlier, start, and do not approve, an upgrade process (
-u
). It will inform from which version it intends to upgrade, before asking for confirmation.
Checking files integrity
As described in
upstream documentation
, a built-in checksum utility allows verification of the integrity of the files on the disk.
See also
Ventoy Documentation
Wikipedia:Ventoy