Note to self:
When installing #proxmox on a new server via USB, verify if there is not a DVD with a #bootable esxi inserted. #headdesk
#bootable
Stop using #Ventoy, now !
A BLOB (Binary Large Object) is a data type used to store large binary data and is located within a program or library. It can be anything: dll, drivers /sys, plugins, firmware, multimedia, etc.
It is not readable, and for Ventoy whose source code is available as open source software, the use of BLOBs is quite suspici... https://en.iguru.gr/eisai-epangelmatias-it-stamata-chrisimopoieis-ventoy-tora/
And do not use #iventoy (closed sources) at all
#linux #debian #lmde #mint #fedora #arch #freebsd #usb #bootable #ubuntu
Create Bootable Linux USB Drive (Windows)
🚀 Oh joy, another way to create #bootable #USB drives because the world clearly needed more of those. 🤦♂️ #GitHub presents #Ventoy, the groundbreaking #technology that lets you do what we've been doing for years, but with extra steps and #emojis. 🙃
https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy #Innovation #HackerNews #ngated
Ventoy: Create Bootable USB Drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI Files
https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy
#HackerNews #Ventoy #USB #Bootable #Tools #ISO #EFI #CreateBootableUSB
Fin de #Windows10 : voici comment installer #Linux, choisir sa #distribution, créer sa #clé #USB #bootable et configurer son nouveau système
Migrez! Devenez Migrant !
I ❤️ #ArchLinux btw
#souveraineté #numérique
La souveraineté commence par soi-même...
www.frandroid.com/comment-fair...
Fin de Windows 10 : voici comm...
Fin de #Windows10 : voici comment installer #Linux, choisir sa #distribution, créer sa #clé #USB #bootable et configurer son nouveau système
Migrez! Devenez Migrant !
I ❤️ #ArchLinux btw
#souveraineté #numérique
La souveraineté commence par soi-même...
https://www.frandroid.com/comment-faire/tutoriaux/2825421_installer-linux-pc
Oh joy, another "immutable distro" for #Kubernetes at the edge, because what we really needed was Linux to be even more fragmented. 🎉 Just follow the convoluted instructions to transform your system into a "secure #bootable image" (whatever that means), and feel free to star it on GitHub for that sweet, sweet open-source virtue signaling. 🚀
https://kairos.io/ #immutable #distro #fragmentation #secure #image #open #source #HackerNews #ngated
VentoyDocker v0.0.2 is here with major improvements
https://github.com/Mr-Sunglasses/VentoyDocker/releases/tag/v0.0.2
Here is a tutorial on how to use VentoyDocker
First Linux > Surface hurdle is the old Grub menu as it assumes keyboard availability 🤦.
The one socket to connect has the Bootable USB. Thanks Grub 2.12.
Anyone know a trick to get an option that works with just the Volume switch? :bb: 🙂 :bb:
I'm having a scan online but in my search for Linuxing a surface never saw any warnings about this little blocker.
EDIT: Found work-around, make Bootable memo card, frees up the USB socket for keyboard 🎉.
Result: Linux Mint now installing & we will see how it goes 😃.
Okay,this is where it gets risky, I'm about to unleash the power of Linux onto my old, old Surface Pro.
Checklist:
- Surface (with Secure Boot disabled) ✅
- Bootable Linux USB ✅
- Power cable ✅
- Snacks ✅
- Sanity … 🤷
#bootable portal extra tools #density #io
from chatgpt onYou said:
compare usb flash drives to nvme in external enclosure - latency and overall speed comparison
ChatGPT said:
Great question — let’s break this down clearly.
⚡ USB Flash Drives vs. NVMe in External Enclosure
Aspect USB Flash Drive NVMe in External Enclosure
Underlying Technology NAND flash on a basic controller (often slower, fewer channels) High-speed NVMe SSD on PCIe lanes inside an enclosure with USB-C or Thunderbolt interface
Typical Interface USB 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2 (5–10 Gbps) USB 3.1/3.2 (10–20 Gbps) or Thunderbolt 3/4 (up to 40 Gbps)
Sequential Read Speed ~100–400 MB/s (high-end USB 3.2 models) 900–2,800 MB/s over USB 3.2; up to ~3,000–4,000 MB/s with Thunderbolt
Sequential Write Speed ~50–300 MB/s (often slower due to cheaper controllers) 900–2,500 MB/s over USB 3.2; higher with Thunderbolt
Random Read/Write IOPS Very low (~1,000–10,000 IOPS), latency ~100–500 µs Much higher (~100,000–600,000 IOPS), latency ~20–100 µs
Latency High (slow controller, weak queueing, high protocol overhead) Low (PCIe NVMe is optimized for low latency; enclosure adds some but still faster)
Performance Stability Degrades quickly on large sustained writes (thermal or cache limits) Much more stable under heavy or sustained workloads (thanks to DRAM cache, better controller)
Use Case Suitability Best for occasional file transfers, light usage Suitable for heavy file transfers, external boot drives, video editing, virtual machines, fast scratch disks
Cost per GB Low Higher (but dropping steadily)
Thermal Considerations Generally none (low power, low heat) Needs proper enclosure cooling; NVMe can throttle under sustained load
🔍 Latency Details
USB flash drives use simple microcontrollers designed for cost, not performance.
Latency is often >100 microseconds per request, plus protocol stack delays.
NVMe SSDs inside an external enclosure are fundamentally designed for high-performance PCIe operation:
Even though USB/Thunderbolt adds some latency, overall you get ~20–100 microseconds access times — significantly lower.
NVMe also benefits from parallel command queues (up to 64K queues) while USB flash sticks typically handle just one or a few.
💡 Real-World Speed Examples
Scenario USB 3.0 Flash Drive NVMe + USB 3.2 Enclosure
Copying 10 GB file ~5–10 min (100 MB/s) ~20–30 sec (400–500 MB/s over USB)
Running OS or apps (external boot) Feels slow, long delays Feels near-native, snappy performance
Editing 4K video off disk Likely choppy or slow Smooth playback and editing
🚀 Summary
✅ NVMe in an external enclosure is vastly faster in both throughput and latency — essentially turning your external drive into a portable high-speed SSD.
⚠ USB flash drives are convenient but optimized for simplicity and cost, not speed.
If you want to boot an OS, run virtual machines, edit large media, or move lots of data, NVMe is a huge upgrade.
If you just want to carry around some documents or backups occasionally, a decent USB stick is still fine.
If you tell me your use case, I can help recommend the best external drive setup! Want me to suggest some specific models?
You said:
do this - plan out a bootable encrypted persistence drive with all the bells and whistles - it is based on kali everything and has all the tools plus some kali everything leaves out, notably it is geared to have a full wiki dump imported into mediawiki, it also has a giant solr index from say top 100 sites and what else? i would like the tone to be specialized as a dx/pentesting but also serving tool - maybe have some components of my cms/portals idea installed, it couldd be customized for various sectors but initially for infosec/IT....you have a 2 tb nvme - fill it up to 1.4gb to leave some space. maybe include pihole and opnsense and malcolm images, have scripts that will run and gather data into a buffer in memory but also on the drive. so the tool should have a open source license but also some community gen resources for how to use with proprietary data and sw and extend. heavy emphasis on osint, versioning, ai and leveraging info - maybe even have some info on going more api less and more on getting reliable feeds, hooking it up to a vps over a vpn to offload and scale, even easy clustering - you could spin up this image on a vm if you wanted to scale cluster
ChatGPT said:
🔥 Plan: Bootable Encrypted Persistence Kali + Specialized DX/Pentest/OSINT Mega Toolkit 🔥
Here’s a detailed, structured build plan for your 2TB NVMe to create a bootable, encrypted, persistent, heavy-duty pentesting + data-ops drive geared for infosec, IT, and OSINT power use.
🛡 Core Design Goals
✅ Bootable Kali “Everything” (with persistence, encryption, and full toolset)
✅ Preloaded MediaWiki with full offline wiki dump (e.g., English Wikipedia)
✅ Prebuilt Solr search index from top ~100 important sites (infosec, tech, OSINT)
✅ Pi-hole, OPNsense, Malcolm IDS preinstalled images or containers
✅ Custom CMS/portal framework (seeded for infosec/IT sector, but extendable)
✅ Ready-to-run scripts and collectors for real-time OSINT + memory buffering
✅ Designed for local offline power use but able to scale to VPS or clusters over VPN
✅ Heavy on open-source tooling but flexible for commercial integration
✅ Includes AI tools and resources for RAG (retrieval-augmented generation), versioning, and live intelligence
🧱 Drive Structure (2TB NVMe, ~1.4TB Used)
Partition Size Contents
Boot partition (GRUB, EFI) ~1 GB GRUB, encrypted LUKS bootloader, persistence hooks
Root (/) encrypted ext4 ~200 GB Kali “Everything” + added tools, drivers, configs, core scripts
/home encrypted ext4 ~200 GB Personal configs, CMS/portal configs, collected data, user scripts
/data encrypted ext4 or ZFS ~1.0 TB MediaWiki + offline dumps, Solr index, Malcolm + IDS data, Pi-hole data, CMS DBs
Swap (encrypted) ~64–128 GB Large swap for memory buffers, AI tools, and clustering workloads
Spare space ~400–600 GB free For additional VMs, containers, OS snapshots, sandboxed work, or expansion
🔧 Major Software Components
✅ Kali Linux Everything +
Extra tools not included:
Ghidra, Angr, Volatility, BloodHound, CrackMapExec
CyberChef offline version, Sigma rules, Mitre ATT&CK navigator offline
Big malware sample zoo (if legally permissible) in quarantined area
Local GitLab instance for version control of tools/scripts
Docker, Podman for running OPNsense, Pi-hole, Malcolm, etc.
✅ MediaWiki with Offline Dump
Preload with latest full English Wikipedia (or curated infosec/IT subset)
Fully searchable, customizable offline knowledgebase
Optionally add other dumps: Stack Overflow, Exploit DB, CVE DB, etc.
✅ Apache Solr Index
Prebuilt Solr/Lucene index with crawled top 100 infosec and tech sites
Local search + analytics, extendable with own crawls or enterprise datasets
✅ Pi-hole, OPNsense, Malcolm
Pi-hole as local DNS sinkhole on container or VM
OPNsense router/firewall images ready to deploy on VM or embedded hardware
Malcolm for network capture, PCAP indexing, IDS analytics
✅ Custom CMS/Portal Layer
Start with lightweight Django or Flask app
Connects local tools, dashboards, script runners
Modular design for sector-specific extensions (infosec, IT, fintech, etc.)
Supports community-developed modules, licensed as open source
✅ OSINT + Data Collection Scripts
Parsers for RSS, Atom, social feeds
In-memory collectors (RAM-buffered) and disk-backed archival
Configurable pipelines for scraping, crawling, and syncing feeds
Exporters to push to VPS, cluster, or partner nodes over VPN
✅ AI + RAG Toolkit
Local vector DB (e.g., Milvus, Weaviate, Qdrant)
Lightweight LLMs (e.g., GGUF models) preloaded with open weights
Scripts for embedding + querying wiki, Solr, Malcolm data
Tools to link out to API-less, robust scraping and offline enrichment
✅ Cluster + VPS Extensions
WireGuard or Tailscale VPN ready to connect to offload nodes
Cluster startup templates (VM- or container-based) to scale horizontally
Option to replicate toolstack on cloud VPS for remote jobs
⚙ Preloaded Scripts + Tools
✅ Quick setup script for new sector (infosec/IT → medical → finance → etc.)
✅ Automated updater for tools, dumps, feeds, AI models
✅ Data sync script (selective or full) to VPS or peer node
✅ Local dashboard UI (web-based) to manage collectors, scrapers, solr, wiki
✅ Burn-in tester + disk health monitor to ensure drive integrity under heavy loads
🔒 Security + Encryption
LUKS full-disk encryption with strong passphrase + Yubikey/2FA support
Encrypted swap to prevent memory leakage
Hidden encrypted vault (Veracrypt or LUKS hidden volume) for sensitive payloads
Scripted integrity checkers + hashes to ensure toolchain hasn’t been tampered
Optional self-destruct script or wipe trigger on tamper detection
📦 Final Disk Fill
With ~1.4TB occupied, you get:
✅ 80–100 GB: Full offline wiki, MediaWiki + DB
✅ ~200–300 GB: Solr search index
✅ ~200–300 GB: Container + VM images (OPNsense, Pi-hole, Malcolm, etc.)
✅ ~200–300 GB: Local tool binaries, scripts, models, datasets
✅ ~200–400 GB: Spare user + working space, logs, collected data
🏗 Customization & Licensing
Open-source license (e.g., GPLv3, MIT) for your tooling and integrations
Community guide + wiki on using it with proprietary/commercial data
Template configs + YAML/JSON to extend it for any industry
Local-first design but ready for hybrid/cloud scaling
Emphasis on reproducibility + versioning: snapshot, rollback, extend
🌐 How You Can Use It
✅ Boot as your all-in-one pentest/OSINT lab anywhere
✅ Plug into a workstation or cluster as a scaling node
✅ Push/pull data to a VPS for remote jobs, aggregation, enrichment
✅ Serve as an offline knowledge + intelligence center when disconnected
🛠 Next Steps
If you want, I can:
✅ Write out the build script / setup checklist
✅ Generate a detailed disk partition map + encryption scheme
✅ Provide YAML or Docker Compose configs for the containers
✅ Build out example CMS/portal components for your sector
✅ Recommend hardware (NVMe enclosure, host systems)
Want me to prepare the detailed technical setup or generate a GitHub starter project? Let me know! 🚀 moving from usb to bootable nvme, also bootable enc persistent image with tools+ info and serving not just winpe dx #bootable portal #generic
Now the penny drops about why pen-drives are called pen-drives.
It's because they're the new pens.
You start with a few then somehow they vanish ,never to be seen again 🫤. I've lost track of how many times I've had to create a new bootable for installing or reinstalling Linux.🤣
So much for a quick install before grabbing tea.
EDIT: Saved time & hassle by the ISO file hiding on my PC 🥳 but I've wasted time messing with other things & playing with my portable online Mastodon 😅, so food first or I might bite someone.
The Joy of Linux Theming in the Age of Bootable Containers
https://blues.win/posts/joy-of-linux-theming/
#HackerNews #Linux #Theming #Joy #Bootable #Containers #OpenSource #Customization
Как удалось сделать флешку в Linux-е с UEFI и UniversalAMDFormBrowser
Наверняка Вы знакомы с загрузочными флэшками usb. Тех самых, с которых устанавливали Windows, или же запускали UniversalAMDFormBrowser. Речь пойдет как раз о usb с типом EFI. Эти флэшки вставляются в выключенный компьютер. При включении, они загружаются через Boot Menu. На ноутбуках это меню может быть доступно по кнопкам "F12" ИЛИ "F10". В Windows же есть программа Rufus для форматирования таких флэшек, а что насчёт Linux-а? Для Linux-а же, как всегда, придётся читать дольше, чтобы найти что-то стоящее. Хотите узнать, что же это? Вам сюда. Мануал
https://habr.com/ru/articles/890632/
#linux #fdisk #efiboot #uefi #rufus #usb #amd_ryzen #amd #insyde #bootable
A great article on bootable containers and how my team integrates it into Podman Desktop by the great @cedricclyburn https://developers.redhat.com/articles/2024/11/27/get-started-bootable-containers-and-image-mode-rhel #bootable #containers #podman #podman-desktop
Tried running #linux #tails operating system off a #bootable #usb .
#distro seems to work nicely. It entirely disappears on shutdown due to
being in RAM only. But then the OS needs all settings and configuration
set afresh on next restart.
What about if I run a #nixOS #container #vm #virtalmachine #virtualize
inside Tails then I could maybe use my #configurationdotnix after each
reboot to save manually reconfiguring after each reboot. What is the
best way of doing this? Tips welcome. Thanks!
#EtchDroid is an #open-source application that helps you write images to USB drives.
Use it to make a #bootable operating system #USB drive when your laptop is dead.
https://github.com/etchdroid/etchdroid
Client Info
Server: https://mastodon.social
Version: 2025.07
Repository: https://github.com/cyevgeniy/lmst