Grub2 chainloading to syslinux and isolinux for a multi-boot flash drive
 

I've been out of the loop for a few years and I need a sanity check on what I'm trying to do here.

Can I configure grub on a flash drive to chainload multiple live cds on a single partition with either syslinux or isolinux such that I would see their native boot menus? Distros like system rescue cd have huge boot menus with a plethora of options that I would like to preserve without reinventing the wheel. Is this doable? What would the grub config file look like?

I learned loop mounting the iso's directly doesn't work with chainloading for some reason, is that true? Extracting the files isn't a big deal so this obviously isn't a game breaker but I was wondering if this was still the case. The posts I saw referencing this were like 5 years old and didn't explain why.

Try usblinstaller, it uses isolinux and the individual boot menus get added as submenus.

I was using this as an excuse to understand the boot process better. I wanted to get this working by hand. I was thinking, and would it be easier to just combine all of the syslinux boot menus and dump all the distros into their own folder at the root of the usb? Would that work?

Sorry, I meant it as something to be analysed for the way it works as it's just a shell script .. not as a replacement for what you're doing. And yes, that's what it does.

Alright cool. It sounds like this is the best solution. Thanks.