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Does anyone know if there is a way to save a bootable ISO (say Knoppix for example) to your hard drive and then get GRUB to boot from it? The idea would be for it to act just like a bootable CD -- make all changes to RAM disk, nothing permanent -- but it would be faster and not take up the CD-ROM drive.
It is possible to d/l an iso and boot from it without burning to a cd. I have done it before, but there are a few steps which involve (from what I remember) essentially making a disk image of the iso onto a partition of your hard drive, then pointing to that partition with either lilo or GRUB. I am currently kicking myself for not bookmarking the site from which I got the instructions, but I will find it and post.
As i recall, it involves making a partition on the hard drive and formatting for iso9660, then burn the iso to that partition (just like it was a cd). But, to get grub to boot it? Don't know yet. Still looking.
The basic idea is that you copy the contents of the iso to a partition. Then, in your current linux os, you copy the kernel and initrd images from the iso to your current boot directory. Last, you edit LILO so that it points to the kernel and initrd images you just copied, and make sure you append the "fromhd" line so that the "livecd" will know where the rest of the knoppix files are. I know that similar instructions worked with kanotix as well (which makes sense since it is knoppix based). The only possible problem for other isos (say non-livecds, for example) is that they may not have a "fromhd" option the way knoppix distros do.
Yes it is possible. Called "Poor Man's Install" I used it successfully for a long time. You can use a bootable .iso but I used the "tohd" option to copy the uncompressed image to my windows partition /dev/hda1. It created a C:\KNOPPIX folder. I still had to boot from the CD but after intering a cheat code:
boot: knoppix fromhd /dev/hda1
I was able to run from my hard drive as if it was the live CD. It ran incredibly faster from the HD, (of course). You can even save your configurations on the windows partition.
The only drawback is that you can't mount your HD in write mode because it then mounts the whole partition as a CDROM.
The basic idea is that you copy the contents of the iso to a partition. Then, in your current linux os, you copy the kernel and initrd images from the iso to your current boot directory. Last, you edit LILO so that it points to the kernel and initrd images you just copied, and make sure you append the "fromhd" line so that the "livecd" will know where the rest of the knoppix files are. I know that similar instructions worked with kanotix as well (which makes sense since it is knoppix based). The only possible problem for other isos (say non-livecds, for example) is that they may not have a "fromhd" option the way knoppix distros do.
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