Install from ISO
Is this even possible?
I'm almost out of CD-Rs, and would like to "poke around" other distros I don't have burned. |
Should be. Mount it as loop device and see what you can do. Many distros will allow for a boot floppy and then installing from a specified place such as a directory on the hard drive. So you might be able to use the boot floppy to mount the filesystem on the hard drive, then mount the iso as a loop device, then point the installer there. If nothing else, copy the files out of loop onto the hard drive, I suppose.
Then again, that pretty much requires a floppy and, then again, if you're not completely broke, CD-Rs aren't too expensive. And you can use CD-RWs, of course, and only need one - then just overwrite them with your next distro. |
It most certainly is. What you'll need to do is mount the ISO image as a loopback device. This page from the Slackware book describes it, but the short answer is basically to
Code:
mount <the ISO file> <mountpoint> -o loop Note that your mountpoint must already be defined. Good luck with it -- J.W. |
Great thanks! I'd kinda figured on it being impossible. :D
I won't be able to download another distro today (internet gets wonky after downloading more than 2 GB), so I'll try getting one tomorrow. |
I used this command in my install script for GoblinX...
mount -t iso9660 -o ro,loop=/dev/loop1 /tmp/goblinx.iso /mnt/isopoint I think you can only mount iso as read-only, so you will have to copy folders or unpack... In some distros this way to install will be more difficult. For livecd is a good way to install because, using my livecd as example, the packages is already compressed into directories, so you will uncompress directories and not install each package. |
Consider Virtual Machines
Have you considered installing your distros on VMware? I do this all of the time to experiment with other/new distros and OSes. VMware is currently offering a free trail of the new beta for free download, otherwise you can download a trail version from the site.
www.vmware.com |
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