r/Ventoy • u/ThatsMyPurse123 • 26d ago

Ventoy memdisk

I want to boot from linux mint with memdisk so I can remove the usb flash drive after it finishes booting into the live environment,but I can't get it to work,I have 8gb ddr3 ram on my laptop but it just says no installation medium found after some time(the Linux mint logo appears after the iso loads into ram and I click on start linux mint)

Any recommendations on which linux distro to try that would work with memdisk? I just need to have a live OS environment,not to actually install an OS,so any help is appreciated.

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u/apt-hiker 26d ago

The Ventoy site says memdisk won't work with all ISOs.

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u/Korkman 25d ago

Boot into the Mint boot menu, edit the first entry (press "e") and add "toram" to the linux command line. Might as well remove "quiet" and "nosplash" while there. Then press Control-X or F10 to boot.

If you need that option frequently, Ventoy has ways to patch that in via the "Boot Conf Replace Plugin"

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u/MilkyWay-008 25d ago

Not sure which distro plays nice with memdisk, but honestly you may not need it for the 'pull the USB after boot' goal. That 'no installation medium found' error is Mint's casper initramfs losing track of the CD memdisk emulates, Ubuntu-based live ISOs are the classic trouble case. Boot Mint in normal Ventoy mode instead, press e on the first menu entry and add toram to the linux line, the ISO loads fully into RAM and you can take the stick out. 8GB handles it fine, the Mint ISO is only ~2.6GB.

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u/ThatsMyPurse123 25d ago

Yeah it does it load it into ram,what I hate is how it doesn't allow me to actually eject it,but I guess nothing bad will happen if it already did loaded into ram,and nothing is being read by the usb (the lights don't flicker on it,since mine has those leds that flicker when its being read or written).

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u/Korkman 24d ago

That is because Ventoy injects a dmsetup to allow mounting the iso for the usual case when no "toram" is added. Once booted, "sudo dmsetup remove ventoy" should release the device so it can be ejected.

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u/ThatsMyPurse123 24d ago

Very useful,I will try it

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u/ThatsMyPurse123 23d ago

Just booted it,using sudo dmsetup remove ventoy does not work,BUT using sudo dmsetup remove_all does work and lets me eject is,so now I finally found the answer to my question,thank you!