Nope. Sorry I know not iso booting.

regards and best wishes, Glenn

@ firewiz87
Thanks for your teaching

Where did you get this info?
Have you links to examples?

I didn't to find any example of grub.cfg with non linux kernel.

When I boot on the pcdd1780.iso file, I have "error: Multiboot header not found" but I can't get any document. It's useless to spend a lot of time if we can't get any further info.

The only doc I could get is regarding the code of grub2 itself, nothing on the use.

Any idea?

Hi there

At least I found out a very important, interresting link.

http://grub.enbug.org/FranklinPiat/grub.cfg.manpage

Will we succeed?

Non linux kernel means the likes of solaris, BSD etc
I have been reading quite a lot these days.... not sure where i got it from. Grub2 does have a wiki though....

Mr.Nice, the instructions you posted were really good. But it involved the extraction of ISO images either using unetbootin or manually, thats something i want to avoid.... though it works fine....

Another tip i got about grub is:
GRUB can not boot CDROM images except if image itself supports booting from iso.
(from #grub on freenode)

I am not exactly clear what it means but i think it means that even if the loop back device can boot the kernel (vmlinuz) it can use the iso for booting only if there is a boot option for that ie like "isofrom" in grml....

we are going from bad to worse....
dont tell me i ll have to build a linux kernel to make this happen...

I found this program : unetbootin-windows-357.exe

UNetbootin - Homepage and Downloads
- [ Diese Seite übersetzen ]
UNetbootin allows for installation of Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, and various other Linux distributions from Windows or Linux without a CD.
unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

it s cool program

hi

since ppl here are interested in grub2 isofrom....I have started but not completed a wiki here
http://sidux.com/index.php?module=Wi...g=Grub2isofrom

actually, grml, sidux and debian-live can all bootfromiso using syslinux or grub-regular

great wiki though
ive bookmarked it and your other links

Keep in Mind these Methods are done in Windows.

Follow this link it will answer all your questions. It is absolutely painless... I have long had the same (swiss army need). It is possible to run both live distros as well as install from live and non-live iso's

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/boot-is...b-flash-drive/

Absolutely brilliant work.

I am certain with these techniques it would also be possible to boot iso that resides on Hard Drive.

As far as saving changes from ramdisk, or running livecd not sure. I know it can be done on ubuntu with the (casper-rw) file. Also there is a very easy way to resize the (casper-rw) file, which keeps persistent changes.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/how-to-...per-rw-images/

A little more knowledge than I have in grub booting methods, should make it possible to do the same from Hard Drive.

I have found Pendrive Linux Site to be a Wealth of Information.

henrichrory

Ubuntu is one of the distros that can be booted from grub2 isofrom......the links are in my wiki but also here.
http://www.panticz.de/MultiBootUSB

AFAIK the issue on using isofrom with grub2 appears to stumble with the actual init scripts buried in the initrd.image or rootfs.image

My wiki attempts to explain how you are to research each distro target but I currently lack the scripting skills to rebuild.

My wish....(yeah right) is to use a structure where I have a rebuilt initrd on the hard drive.....that uses a rebuilt init script inside it...so its possible to boot any Linux isofile.

my wiki does not explain how to unpack initrd.images....but I do know how...heh heh but its not yet useful as why show it if you can not exploit it?

Thankyou for the info... I am also trying to help others with booting iso's from usb and from hard drives. I think I have some interesting info for booting iso's from hard drives... http://www.panticz.de/MultiBootUSB

I think it would be an easy tweak to boot from usb thumbdrive and point to iso on harddrive without disturbing existing OS install on harddrive whether it be windows or linux. Also, I'm certain that any of these can be made persistent individually or with a shared casper.rw file. Easily resized in windows or resized manually in linux.

I am wanting to do this... Have a base OS installed on harddrive and have 3 or 4 iso's from different distributions on root of drive. Then booting the iso's using grub2 which would be installed on usb thumbdrive, whether or not live w/ or w/out persistence. The ultimate in multiple OS's no more messing with partitions etc. Just put iso on harddrive add entry <by script in future> and whoala!! new OS to play with!! :V

Another use for this type of system would be distributed file systems and hpc computing... You know distributed etc. Simply put : An ISO used to supply image for distributed machines whether netbooted or pxe or whatever all machines run same OS. Like bccd. Create a Single shared file E.G. casper.rw or in windows it would be a quorum disk<.. geek speak shared drive. Another use would be a quick boot on multiple machines for DISTCC style operations. Probably all offtopic but... usefull.

MultiBoot USB with Grub2 (boot directly from iso files)
Thu, 07/16/2009 - 13:22 — panticz
DEVICE=/dev/sdb
VOLUME=MultiBootUSB


# create filesystem on usb pen
sudo mkfs.vfat -n ${VOLUME} ${DEVICE}1


# mount usb
mount ${DEVICE}1 /mnt/


# install grub2 on usb pen
grub-install --no-floppy --root-directory=/mnt ${DEVICE}


# create grub config
cat <<EOF> /mnt/boot/grub/grub.cfg
menuentry "Ubuntu Live 9.10 32bit" {
loopback loop /boot/iso/ubuntu-9.10-desktop-i386.iso
linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/boot/iso/ubuntu-9.10-desktop-i386.iso noeject noprompt --
initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz
}

menuentry "Ubuntu Live 9.10 64bit" {
loopback loop /boot/iso/ubuntu-9.10-desktop-amd64.iso
linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/boot/iso/ubuntu-9.10-desktop-amd64.iso noeject noprompt --
initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz
}

menuentry "Grml small 2009.10" {
loopback loop /boot/iso/grml-small_2009.10.iso
linux (loop)/boot/grmlsmall/linux26 findiso=/boot/iso/grml-small_2009.10.iso apm=power-off lang=us vga=791 boot=live nomce noeject noprompt --
initrd (loop)/boot/grmlsmall/initrd.gz
}

menuentry "tinycore" {
loopback loop /boot/iso/tinycore_2.3.1.iso
linux (loop)/boot/bzImage --
initrd (loop)/boot/tinycore.gz
}

menuentry "Netinstall 32 preseed" {
loopback loop /boot/iso/mini.iso
linux (loop)/linux auto url=http://www.panticz.de/pxe/preseed/preseed.seed locale=en_US console-setup/layoutcode=de netcfg/choose_interface=eth0 debconf/priority=critical --
initrd (loop)/initrd.gz
}

menuentry "debian-installer-amd64.iso" {
loopback loop /boot/iso/debian-installer-amd64.iso
linux (loop)/linux vga=normal --
initrd (loop)/initrd.gz
}

menuentry "BackTrack 4" {
linux /boot/bt4/boot/vmlinuz BOOT=casper boot=casper nopersistent rw vga=0x317 --
initrd /boot/bt4/boot/initrd.gz
}

menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+)" {
linux /boot/img/memtest86+.bin
}

menuentry "BackTrack ERR" {
loopback loop /boot/iso/bt4-pre-final.iso
linux (loop)/boot/vmlinuz find_iso/filename=/boot/iso/bt4-pre-final.iso BOOT=casper boot=casper nopersistent rw vga=0x317--
initrd (loop)/boot/initrd.gz
}

menuentry "XBMC ERR" {
loopback loop /boot/iso/XBMCLive.iso
linux (loop)/vmlinuz boot=cd isofrom=/dev/sda1/boot/iso/XBMCLive.iso xbmc=nvidia,nodiskmount,tempfs,setvolume loglevel=0 --
initrd (loop)/initrd0.img
}

menuentry "netboot.me ERR" {
loopback loop /boot/iso/netbootme.iso
linux (loop)/gpxe.krn
}
EOF

# create iso directory
mkdir /mnt/boot/iso

#
# download images
#
# Ubuntu Live 9.10 32bit
wget http://ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/linux/ubunt...sktop-i386.iso -P /mnt/boot/iso

# Ubuntu Live 9.10 64bit
wget http://ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/linux/ubunt...ktop-amd64.iso -P /mnt/boot/iso

# grml
wget http://grml.deb.at/grml-small_2009.10.iso -P /mnt/boot/iso

# tinycore
wget http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/...core_2.3.1.iso -P /mnt/boot/iso

# netinstall
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dis...tboot/mini.iso -P /mnt/boot/iso

# xbmc
# unzip http://downloads.sourceforge.net/sou...ive-9.04.1.zip

# debian
wget http://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/e...tboot/mini.iso -O /mnt/boot/iso/debian-installer-amd64.iso

# netboot.me
wget http://static.netboot.me/gpxe/netbootme.iso -P /mnt/boot/iso

# umount
sync
umount /mnt/






# links
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/94204
http://debianforum.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=111249
http://michael-prokop.at/blog/2009/0...iso-via-grub2/
https://wiki.edubuntu.org/Grub2

henrichrory

does the ERR in your grub2 menu indicate you have fails for these?

Sorry for late reply...Had been away for a while....

Happy to see that there are others who want a solution to this....
Here is my current status:

It is seen that not all distros can be booted from ISOs...
That is only those distros that has a kernel parameter to boot from ISOs (like fromISO parameter) can be booted from Iso images...

I also noticed that most distros which does not have a "boot from iso" option can be can be booted if the ISO image is extracted. but thats not fool proof either... distros like openSUSE cannot be booted even if the iso is extracted, they need a custom initrd image to be built (i haven't figured out that process yet)

Another problem i faced was that GRUB2 loopback cannot be used with DVD images...

So there goes my hope of finding a "general" method to boot distros from ISO images... but i ll keep trying, even though i sometimes wonder if all this is an overkill.... all we wanna do is boot a distro after all...

I have thought about another potential method. Basically, create a CD or DVD-sized partition, and use dd to fill it with the binary data from the .iso file.

dd if=/path/to/iso/file.iso of=/dev/sdxy bs=8192000

x is disk drive, y is partition number. Use fdisk to create the partition of the appropriate size.

I think that after doing this, you may possibly be able to get around some of the bootloader versus some distros limitations. I used this method back in the early early days of the Mac Pro, when I really really needed to install linux, and the linuxes then available did not have driver support for the SATA port the builtin DVDROM drive was plugged into.

In skimming through this post, it seems unetbootin has been missed out. Having checked out the layout of a bootable thumb drive created with Unetbootin, I'd say it should be possible to make it multiboot. I find thumb drives created with unetbootin seem to be more reliable when booting certain systems that have issues booting with flash drives created by other utilities. I have even seen them outclass proprietary paid-for solutions.

AntiX has a script to make a bootable thumb drive with a persistent data partition and it's easy to make it multiboot by simply adding a few iso images and editing grub.

SimplyMEPIS has a bootable thumb drive creator, but it needs a CD-ROM or DVD as the source, will not work from ISO.

Mike P

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