Afternoon:

I have Xubuntu 12.04 (1.2Gb) burnt on a 4.9Gb DVD. I'd like to put at least 1 more O.S on this DVD and be able to select which O.S I'd run. How do I accomplish this?
Thanx:
Rick

Hi...

I don't think you do. I've never heard of this being possible.

However, I think you can from a USB flash drive, see here.

Regards...

It might be possible but you would have to make new iso9660 filesystem plus edit each distro's scripts. It might be very difficult depending on your skill. Perhaps no ready made solution is available yet for this. You can make multi-distros on usb as said in prev post.

As far as I know, you can't burn to a DVD once you've already finished burning it.

I've never messed with this, but you may be able to make an ISO image with several "partitions" (if that's even possible on a DVD, I don't know) and a bootloader that lets you select which partition to boot from.

I know that there are some projects out there that seem to do something similar, like the Ultimate Boot CD (NOT the Windows one). However, I don't know how they have everything set up, their website might be helpful.

Hope this helps!

I don't know if you can do it after you have already burned one image to the DVD. You can definitely do it, by it I mean putting multiple Live CDs on a DVD. You are limited by the size of the DVD obviously and it is considerably easier to do it on a flash drive.

If you have Xubuntu, take a look to see if you have grub-mkrescue avaiable as it is about as easy as you will find and should work on Ubuntu derivatives. You can create a directory and put your Ubuntu derived iso files directly in it, then create a boot directory with a grub sub-directory and then manually create a grub.cfg file with proper entries and then run the grub-mkrescue.

The command above created a bootable iso with Ubuntu and Peppermint iso files in the iso directory. Use the standard menuentry to boot the iso directly, one example below:

You can't create partitions on a CD or DVD but you are limited only by the size of the CD/DVD. Obviously, read-only filesystems so no changes can be made. You can also do this with Grub Legacy if you include the stage2_eltorito file in the Grub directory and use the "mkisofs" or "genisoimage" commands. Using Grub2 is similar but there is not stage2_eltorito. Last time I use it I believe the file was named eltorito.img although I don't seem to find it on Ubunt/Mint systems?

Good luck.

CD/DVD have no option of partitions. Usually they boot based on eltorito specification. And mkisofs creates one with usually single or many boot sectors (alternative boot images). Usually isolinux is used and it can load a kernel and optional initrd/initramfs. So one would have to alter both layout as well as these initrds and much more.

I did this a couple times with some Sidux discs. I had combined multiple CDs into one DVD. The Sidux live discs used Grub to boot (I think) squashfs images from the disc. It was just a matter of throwing all of the images with a modified grub on to DVD. I don't remember all of steps necessary at the moment, and the method wasn't compatible with all live CDs. Most I can offer is the iso I had created for study.

In my system Grub as a eltorito boot image doesn't works though it works fine in Qemu VM.

Also some versions of syslinux (isolinux) has the same problem. Best to test which version works with your system. It would have been great if all versions worked perfectly. But perhaps most system manufacturers target Microsoft Windows by default for desktop/laptop.

Want to THANK everyone who replied. WOW, quite a degree of difference in the reply's, but hey, that's how we learn(?) ROCKY, thanx for the post, but I know how to do multiple O.S.'s on a jumpdrive. I've got some CD/DVD's hanging around I thought I use them if possible. Anyway, my laptop's history, so when I get anonther/new one, then I'll burn some good diagnostic tools to a CD/DVD. Right now, I don't have any space free on any of my jumpdrives since that damn laptop fried 3 of them.
Stay Sharp:
Rick