Boot Debian Squeeze from local distribution image?

Seemoi · 07-15-2012, 05:20 PM

Other than;

ISO
ISCSI
Virtualization (Virtualbox etc.)

Is there a different method to boot a customized (Debian Sqeeze)
distribution from a file on a local disk?

I could benefit from this by hashing the file if I ever wish to
check integrity.

Thank you.
Seemoi

Reuti · 07-16-2012, 07:17 AM

If it’s local you booted already? iSCSI will go across the network, like you could use PXE for it and boot via network.

Seemoi · 07-17-2012, 06:10 PM

Reuti...

Are you saying there is no way to boot from a local file ?

Thank you.

etech3 · 07-17-2012, 07:44 PM

My take on this would be:
ISO
USB drive
PXE
live-build
virtual >qemu, and the test your live-build image

just my

and that's all I got to say about that.

jefro · 07-17-2012, 09:36 PM

Grub or grub4dos can boot some distro's directly from the iso.

Kind of complex but you should be able to change root and set paths and such and boot directly from another linux.

PXE and the extended loader GPXE/IPXE would be possible to boot from almost any web source.

I like using live usb's.

Seemoi · 07-18-2012, 07:09 AM

Thank you for your feedback.

Looks like ISO is the favorite so far.
I've tried this before with less than stellar reliability.

I'm curious about an ability to hash whichever file I end up
booting from via sha256sum to verify if it's not been altered
or corrupted.

Is there is any advantage to boot from an iscsi file
stored locally ?

Regards,
Seemoi