rpi-zero-usb-iso

Tasks such as installing Linux frequently require creating USB bootable drives. This requires wiping out a USB drive for each bootable drive you want to create. Alternatives such as Ventoy tackle this problem.

rpi-zero-usb-iso provides an alternative: use the Linux Mass Storage Gadget feature on a Raspberry Pi to expose ISO files in a directory as USB bootable drives.

Requirements

A Raspberry Pi that can run connected to a USB port of a computer.

I have tested this with:

• Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
  • Raspberry Pi OS Lite Bookworm
  • Installed with Raspberry Pi Imager (with network configuration to access via SSH)
  • An EP-0097 so the Pi can be powered safely from the USB port

See this post on the Raspberry Pi forums for details on other systems that might work and caveats.

Setup

mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
wget https://github.com/alexpdp7/rpi-zero-usb-iso/releases/latest/download/rpi-zero-usb-iso -O ~/.local/bin/rpi-zero-usb-iso
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/rpi-zero-usb-iso
rpi-zero-usb-iso setup

Copy at least one ISO to the ISOs directory, then reboot the Raspberry if prompted by rpi-zero-usb-iso setup.

Usage

Copy ISOs to the ISOs directory.

rpi-zero-usb-iso automatically uses the last modified ISO on boot. Use touch to "select" an ISO.

Windows

Windows installer ISOs only support their use as optical media. Use https://github.com/alexpdp7/windows-usb/ to convert ISOs downloaded from Microsoft to USB images that rpi-zero-usb-iso can use.

Tested media

• Completed a full install
  • Windows 11 24H2 (using windows-usb to convert optical media)
  • ChromeOS Flex 16002.51.0_reven_recovery_stable-channel_mp-v6
  • AlmaLinux 10
  • Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS
• Only smoke tested installer start
  • Proxmox VE 8.4
  • Debian 12.11.0
  • Ubuntu 22.04.5
  • Ubuntu 24.04.2

Hacking

Setup

(Tested on Debian 12)

~/.cargo/config.toml:

[target.aarch64-unknown-linux-musl]
linker = "/usr/bin/aarch64-linux-gnu-gcc-12"

$ sudo apt install gcc-12-aarch64-linux-gnu
$ rustup target add aarch64-unknown-linux-musl

Building and running

$ cargo build --target=aarch64-unknown-linux-musl && scp target/aarch64-unknown-linux-musl/debug/rpi-zero-usb-iso x: && ssh x ./rpi-zero-usb-iso ...

Contributing

Patches are welcome, but I can only test on my hardware. Happy if others add support for more hardware, but I can only recommend using the hardware that has been tested.