Is there a way that I can boot ISO images without needing to know exactly what the IS
 

I have 2 ISO images and I would like to be able to choose which one to boot from. One is a DOS 5.0 image, and the other is a Finnix image. (Finnix is simply a Linux command line, like Linux's equivalent to DOS)

I have tried Xboot and SARDU. Neither will successfully load either OS. I have checked the ISOs by burning them and booting from them individually, and the CDs work perfectly.

Something that I noticed with both Xboot and SARDU- they both want you to select your ISO type from a menu, and neither program has my ISO listed.

I guess my final question would be:
Is there a way that I can boot ISO images without needing to know exactly what the ISO is?

VirtualBox can boot ISOs in window$7. Not what you want to do I'm sure but answers the main Q?

So Xboot and SARDU are for bundling ISOs in to a multi-boot boot-device then burned to a medium to boot from; sounds cool do you only want this for your computer, are you opposed to installing DOS 5.:confused: and Finnix along side 7 and using Grub?

I downloaded and booted Finnix with no problems in VirtualBox on my Linux system. If it's an iso, it should boot. Don't know about your DOS 5.0.

Sorry, I think my first post was a little vague.

My end goal is to have a single CD/DVD/flash drive/whatever that has a boot manager (like GRUB) and I can choose between booting DOS 5.0 or Finnix (and possibly others).

SARDU and Xboot will not work, most likely because they require that I select what the ISO is supposed to boot, and I don't see either of my ISOs listed there.

I'm hoping that a program exists that can make a boot disk for multiple OSes without requiring that you select the OS from a list.

+request a moderator to put this in the software section
 

It looks like those are tools that can do it but maybe the ISOs are not supported? (Link 1)-"2. (1)Drag and drop some ISOs into the XBOOT window (2) Select Create USB" Attachment 13826-"The tool will notify you if the ISO is not supported."

More to try:
tinyapps.org/blog/misc/201005080700_boot_any_iso_from_usb.html

{ this:
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/man...D_002dROM.html
plus:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1549847 }

yumi: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-mu...t-usb-creator/

It is possible to boot multiple systems from a CD/DVD or flash drive. You would have to have pretty small distributions to put them on a CD but a DVD or flash drive would not present much of a problem. Grub2 does this but the iso must be bootable. It can be done with Ubuntu and a number of its derivatives as well as some other systems. Don't know about Finnix, I seriously doubt it and very much doubt DOS 5.0 would be bootable in this manner.

You could loop mount each iso to extract the directories/files and copy them to another directory which is writeable. You could then create a menu.lst if you are using Grub Legacy and copy the stage2_eltorito file to the /boot/grub directory of the top level directory to which you had copied the loop mounted directories/files. This can be easily done with pretty much any Linux distributions but have no idea if it will work with DOS. I would be surprised if it worked.

It is not surprising that Finnix and DOS 5.0 are not on the list for xboot and Sardu as they are both extremely uncommon and little used.

jamison20000e, the link you provided was exactly what I was looking for.

The tinyapps link led me to this page, which looked like it did exactly what I wanted to.

Thank you!!!!

I'm now marking this as solved.

EDIT:
Now GRUB is being annoying (or I'm being stupid, either one is likely...)
Marking as unsolved

I take that back, now GRUB is giving me issues.

As far as I know, I am using grub legacy, not grub2

When I try to boot the Finnix, I get error 62. It tells me to add "--heads=0", and I do.
Then I get error 63. It tells me to add "--sectors-per-track=0". I add it in.
Now I get error 11, which says that it doesn't recognize the device string.
I had no idea how to fix this, so I proceeded to DOS 5.0.
DOS 5.0 gave me the same error 11. I did NOT have to add "--heads-0" or "--sectors-per-track=0".
I added a memtest86 ISO to the drive, and it did the same as the DOS.
I double- and triple-checked, and my filenames are spelled correctly

The error occurred on the "map -hook" line of all three ISOs

I added reboot and shutdown entries that work, so I don't feel completely helpless :)

Here is my menu.lst as of now:
color green/black black/green

title Finnix
map --heads=0 --sectors-per-track=0 (hd0,0)/finnix-108.iso (hd32)
map -hook
chainloader (hd32)
boot

title DOS 5.0
map (hd0,0)/DOS_5.0.iso (hd32)
map -hook
chainloader (hd32)
boot

title Memtest 86
map (hd0,0)/memtest86.iso (hd32)
map -hook
chainloader (hd32)
boot

title Restart the computer
reboot

title Shut down the computer
halt

I hope you are using Grub Legacy because the menu entries and command vary greatly between Legacy and Grub2 and the grub menu entries you have posted above will not work in Grub2. I doubt you will be able to boot either the Finnix or Dos iso directly but let us know if you succeed. If you want to boot finnix from a flash with Grub2 installed the entry below worked for me. I already had Grub2 installed on the flash so I just put the entry in grub.cfg after loop mounting to extract the two folders and files for Finnix and copying them to the / of the 1st partition on the flash. Below are the two directories and the files for the / of finnix.

The grub.cfg entry for Grub2 which boots the extracted finnix is below.

If you are using Grub Legacy, the following should boot Finnix, haven't tested it yet:

The above should work if you are booting a flash drive set to first boot priority in the BIOS.

I was looking on some other forums, and I saw something about using two dashes "map --hook".
I tried it, and it boots the DOS with no problems (at least as far as I checked- all I really did was check the DIR command).
Finnix, however, was not working. I would get to its menu and select the 32-bit version. Normally, it gets some green text in the logo, telling me to press SPACE to continue. Normally, I would do so, and it would load and work fine.

But when I tried it with the "--hook" instead of "-hook", it would hang at the "press SPACE"

I then extracted the ISO to a folder named "finnix-108". I adjusted the file paths in your model to account for the "finnix-108", and booted. With these settings, I see GRUB messages about the filesystem is fat, and then it starts into a shell loading screen. It gives me "[*] waiting for devices to settle...try(x)". x would go from 1 to three over the course of about 15 seconds, then tell me that it couldn't locate some files. It then spits me into a basic shell and tells me to try to mount the device to "/ramdisk/cdrom"

Now, I can NOT replicate the hang where it told me to press space.

Memtest86 did something similar. When I stuck it into a separate computer, it loaded the blue screen, I saw a blinking cursor about 3/4 of the way down, and it just hung there. However, when I tried to boot using QEMU, it loaded fine.

I would skip that and just copy the boot and finnix directories to the / of the system along with the other files. There should not be any duplicates with DOS, but I don't have DOS so I don't know. Many systems need specific directories/files in the / of the system and won't boot if they are not there, if they are in a sub-directory. Other than that, I have no other ideas.

Are you using Grub Legacy?
Can you post your menu.lst entries from Grub?

Yes, I'm pretty sure I'm using GRUB legacy.

Here's my menu.lst as of now:

Are you using a flash drive?
Did you try removing the /finnix-108 from the kernel and initrd lines?
Did you remove the finnix /boot directory as well as the finnix directory out of the finnix-108 directory and put them in the / (root) of the filesystem?

The menuentry I posted above in post 9 came from the Finnix /boot/grub/loopback.cfg file.

Grub 1 is a terrible choice for your project. You should rather use Isolinux (or Syslinux, if you plan to do this on an USB stick) together with Memdisk. This combination is able to boot the DOS ISO and, since Finnix supports the findiso= boot parameter, your Finnix ISO.
More info: http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.p...ISK#ISO_images

I moved everything out to the system root, and now it boots fine directly to the command line. Because I might end up putting more stuff on there once I figure out how to use GRUB the right way, I'd like to keep everything in sub-folders. Besides, I would bet that almost every Linux distro uses that path for its kernel.