Re: Is it possible to install NetBSD from Ventoy?

[Liam Proven <lproven%gmail.com@localhost>]

On Thu, 14 Dec 2023 at 12:52, Martin Husemann <martin%duskware.de@localhost> wrote:
>
> The web page does not give any technical details, so it is hard to tell
> how it is supposed to work.

I don't know, to be perfectly honest. I have not looked into it: it's
just a convenience tool that is both much quicker than writing an
image to disk, easier, and saves on rewriting keys: one key is a Linux
install key, and a Windows install key, and a few recovery
environments such as System Rescue.

> Since you tested it with FreeBSD: what devices shows up as root device
> there?

I can try it and check if you really need to know!

The source is here if you're curious:
https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy

> Extracting the bootloader and dynamically generating the boot menu is the
> easy part, but how is the main part of the ISO filesystem provided to
> the kernel?

I think it mounts it on a separate virtual device, as the booted live
OS can see the raw Ventoy drive and UEFI partition _as well as_
running from its ISO file.

> On some architectures (and amd64 is one of them) the kernel booted from
> the ISO is not ramdisk based, but instead mounts the CD's ISO9660 file
> system as / (and sets up tmpfs for all writable parts).

You can choose whether to copy the ISO to a RAMdisk and boot from
that, if you have enough RAM and want to be able to remove the key.

> I don't see how that could work outside of an emulator.

It does, very well, and it works equally well on BIOS and UEFI.


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