this is a short guide how I use porteus with ventoy on my 64gb flash drive
Ventoy: https://www.ventoy.net/
"Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files. With ventoy, you don't need to format the disk over and over, you just need to copy the ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files to the USB drive and boot them directly."
This way you can just have 1 flash drive/USB drive for porteus and also other tools/ISOs/systems
I found out that the best way is to have everything embedded in the porteus ISO, I tried using ventoy plugin for replacing porteus.cfg file but that didn't work on some PCs
1. Get a device (flash drive or other) which you want to use for this
2. Install ventoy based on their current tutorial (at the time of writing it was just download their tool, start it, click install; now I have ventoy-1.0.96 and the "Ventoy" partition is NTFS for me)
3. Download Porteus ISO from a mirror porteus.org/porteus-mirrors.html which one you want (right now I have Porteus-LXDE-v5.01-x86_64.iso)
4. Download all updates from a mirror porteus.org/porteus-mirrors.html the updates which you need for your iso are listed in the updates.txt file in a mirror e.g. https://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/dl. ... pdates.txt
5. Get a tool which can make/edit ISO files, I used AnyBurn
6. Prepare porteus.cfg file which will replace the original \boot\syslinux\porteus.cfg in the ISO file, you can edit what you want and add your custom boot options; main ones of mine are:
Code: Select all
LABEL GRAPHICAL_CUSTOM_WITH_MOUNTED_STORAGE
MENU LABEL GUI enc stor realtime
KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
APPEND changes=LABEL:Ventoy/_Porteus/Storage/main_storage_encrypted.dat
TEXT HELP
Mounted encrypted main_storage_encrypted.dat as WRITE
SAVE realtime to usb (a lot of writes to flash)
ENDTEXT
LABEL GRAPHICAL_CUSTOM_WITH_MOUNTED_STORAGE_READONLY
MENU LABEL [8gbRAM+] GUI RO enc stor
KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
APPEND changes=LABEL:Ventoy/_Porteus/Storage/main_storage_encrypted.dat changes-ro
TEXT HELP
Mounted encrypted main_storage_encrypted.dat as READONLY
ENDTEXT
LABEL GRAPHICAL_CUSTOM_WITH_MOUNTED_STORAGE_WRITE_ON_EXIT
MENU LABEL [8gbRAM+] GUI enc stor EXIT
KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
APPEND changes=EXIT:LABEL:Ventoy/_Porteus/Storage/main_storage_encrypted.dat
TEXT HELP
Mounted encrypted main_storage_encrypted.dat as WRITE
SAVE ON EXIT to usb (less writes to flash)
ENDTEXT
explanation could be found in the "cheatcodes.txt" in the ISO or right now here: http://www.porteus.org/tutorials/26-gen ... -them.html
in short:
a) GRAPHICAL_CUSTOM_WITH_MOUNTED_STORAGE - changes are read/written to partition with label "Ventoy" at path /_Porteus/Storage/main_storage_encrypted.dat
b) GRAPHICAL_CUSTOM_WITH_MOUNTED_STORAGE_READONLY - data are read from partition with label "Ventoy" at path /_Porteus/Storage/main_storage_encrypted.dat and its only read only
c) GRAPHICAL_CUSTOM_WITH_MOUNTED_STORAGE_WRITE_ON_EXIT - data are read/written to partition with label "Ventoy" at path /_Porteus/Storage/main_storage_encrypted.dat and "EXIT" means that the data will be written during shutting down of the system
PS: I had a lot of issues with EXIT and using chrome, it didn't save my chrome profile maybe my fault but I'd guess it might have been 4gb ram not enough for everything so it might just ignore some stuff? not sure
7. Open anyburn and replace the porteus.cfg file and "install" all the updates in the order they appear in the updates folder by overwriting the proper files and save the ISO file on your main Ventoy partition which should contain ISO files
8. First boot select boot option which doesn't use the "changes" option you will have to create it from Porteus (e.g. "Always Fresh")
9. In porteus (LXDE) click top left -> System Tools -> Porteus SaveFile Manager; and create a savefile, I created encrypted one at path "/_Porteus/Storage/main_storage_encrypted.dat" on the "Ventoy" partition
10. Reboot and boot via one of the custom boot options to enjoy your system