liveusb

This project allows you to create a grub2-based USB flash drive with the following boot options that work under both BIOS and UEFI firmwares:

• Various Linux live CDs directly in .iso format
• Windows 10 setup, as prepared by the media creation tool
• Boot from network, using iPXE
• Memory test

The main idea is that you download liveusb.zip, extract it to get a 300 MiB fat32 image named liveusb.img, and then write that image to your drive. Finally, you resize the partition to fill the free space.

Initially, the liveusb can only boot from the network and do a memory test. You're supposed to manually add the linux-distributions.iso and the Windows files later on.

Linux instructions

To create the liveusb drive under Linux, run the following commands, while replacing sdx with your actual device:

wget -nv https://github.com/alkisg/liveusb/raw/main/liveusb.zip
unzip liveusb.zip
sudo umount /dev/sdx*
sudo dd if=liveusb.img of=/dev/sdx bs=1M status=progress
sudo partprobe /dev/sdx
sudo apt install --yes gparted
sudo gparted /dev/sdx

Resize the /dev/sdx1 partition to fill the free space and close gparted.

Windows instructions

Download liveusb.zip and unzip it to get liveusb.img.

Then download Rufus and use it to write liveusb.img to a USB flash drive.

Finally, use EaseUS Partition Master Free to resize the fat32 partition to fill the free space.

Add the Linux .iso files

Download your favorite distribution .iso, for example ubuntu-mate-20.04.2.0-desktop-amd64.iso, and put it in the appropriate folder in the USB flash drive, for example in /liveusb/ubuntu/ubuntu-mate-20.04.2.0-desktop-amd64.iso.

The following distributions are currently supported: antix, clonezilla, debian, fedora, kali, manjaro, opensuse, ubuntu.

To select the live session language or to pass custom kernel parameters you can create a /grub/local.cfg file similar to this one.

Add the Windows boot files

Visit the Windows 10 media creation tool download page and run the tool to create a second USB flash drive, that only supports Windows 10.

Then in that drive rename /efi/boot/bootx64.efi to /efi/boot/bootx64m.efi.

Finally, copy all those files to the liveusb drive. The /efi directory exists in both drives, so answer "Merge" when prompted, but no files have the same name, so nothing will get overwritten.

Add memtest.efi

I don't think memtest86.efi is redistributable, so you need to download it yourself. Get and unzip memtest86-usb.zip, extract memtest86-usb.img from it, write it to a second USB flash drive with dd or Rufus, and finally copy /EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.efi from there to /liveusb/efi/memtest86.efi.

What does liveusb include?

Liveusb is created by running the liveusb script in my own PC. You can run it yourself to generate your own liveusb.img, as long as you have grub-pc-bin (for BIOS), grub-efi-amd64-signed (for UEFI) and shim-signed (for secure boot) installed. The significant files in the USB flash drive are as follows. You are supposed to provide the files mentioned by "YOU":

.
├── EFI
│   └── BOOT
│       ├── bootx64.efi  # UEFI: Ubuntu's signed bootloader, shimx64.efi
│       └── bootx64m.efi  # YOU: Microsoft's efi bootloader, renamed
├── grub
│   └── grub.cfg  # The grub configuration file
└── liveusb
    ├── efi
    │   ├── ipxe.efi  # UEFI: Network boot (iPXE)
    │   └── memtest86.efi  # YOU: Memory test
    ├── linux16
    │   ├── ipxe.lkrn  # BIOS: Network boot (iPXE)
    │   └── memtest86+.bin  # BIOS: Memory test
    ├── memdisk
    │   └── dos.img  # BIOS: DOS, for BIOS flashing etc
    └── ubuntu
        └── ubuntu-mate-20.04.2.0-desktop-amd64.iso  # YOU: Ubuntu live CDs