alittletooquiet.net

bootboot makes bootable images to go on CDs and USB drives. It combines multiple live systems onto a single boot media. The built boot media can then be used to boot into any of the included live systems, which are called "targets" in bootboot speak.

bootboot is functional and useful, but isn't yet in a releasable state. You can get the current development code with bzr:

bzr branch http://www.alittletooquiet.net/media/code/bootboot

The basic usage for bootboot is as follows:

$ bootboot --media=hdd \
   --cylinders=496 --heads=64 --sectors-per-track=63 \
   ubuntu-710-desktop ubuntu-710-cli ubuntu-710-netinstall \
   ubuntu-710-netinstall-cli ubuntu-710-netinstall-cli-expert \
   puppy-301-usbflash memtest86+-201 local-boot

The above command builds a hard disk image (which can be written directly to a USB drive) that will boot several different Ubuntu 7.10 targets, Puppy Linux, memtest86+, or the boot loader installed on the first local hard disk. Any needed source files are automatically fetched from the network.

Want the same image on CD? Easy:

$ bootboot --media=cdrom \
   ubuntu-710-desktop ubuntu-710-cli ubuntu-710-netinstall \
   ubuntu-710-netinstall-cli ubuntu-710-netinstall-cli-expert \
   puppy-301-usbflash memtest86+-201 local-boot

I will continue working on bootboot at some point, however, I don't have much time for it lately, and I don't want to keep sitting on what I find to be a valuable tool.

As always, I'm happy to accept patches if anyone has improvements. Adding support for new targets should be easy, and I'd especially love patches that do that. bootboot currently only supports targets that I've personally had the desire to boot.