I'm running low on cd-rs and am downloading an iso now for the LiveCD of Fedora Core 11. Can I mount this as a loopback and copy the files grub would need to boot this from my hard drive?

Hey bro, I think if you have a spare partition to boot it from you can do it that way...

you would need a partition to install to and one to install from.
If you had fat32 or ext2/3 usb and computer boots from usb(or use bootfloppy to boot usb),
then you could install from usb, maybe best choice.

I have netbootcd-3.0 for usb which can netinstall any major distro.
If you want link to netbootcd-3.0-usb I will give it to you.

Or, you could copy iso to usb, install syslinux or grub and install from there.

So, tell me what you wanna do and we'll hook it up...cough

Well, for some odd reason I cannot get my computer to boot from a usb (I have messed with the BIOS and it is set up there to boot from USB...but it usually doesn't work). Another downside is that my pc doesn't have a floppy drive. So, it's either booted from a cd/dvd or from the hard drive. I have 14 partitions on my hard drive-so I could find 2 partitions to use.

Hard drive is the way I'd like to go

OK, assuming you have grub already installed to hd...

mount and copy iso to root of one partition.
edit your menu.lst for that partition to boot the extracted iso kernel/initrd.
so, you gotta translate the isolinux.cfg entry to grub entry.

here is menu.lst for fedora10 net-install iso on /dev/hda2

title Fedora 10 Net-Install
root (hd0,1)
kernel /isolinux/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda2
initrd /isolinux/initrd.img


So, just translate that for your hd partition and iso
then, boot and install.

I just copied the whole iso to root of hda2, edited menu.lst in boot/grub
and booted up.

Installer asked if I image was on cd, hd, etc
I said hd, directory "/images" or just "/"
and install proceded.

Please tell me if that works for you....

so do I just need the vmlinuz file and initrd.img file from the iso and then copy the entire iso to the root of that same partition that those 2 files are at?

well, I did something wrong. Grub was able to boot the kernel from the live cd...but a couple seconds into boot it froze. After doing a checksum on the iso file I did this:

mount -o loop Fedora-11-x86_64-Live.iso FC11-live/

Then I did a cd FC11-live and copied all to partition sda9 which was mounted as /media/sda9:

cp -r * /media/sda9

Then I found the kernel and initrd files /media/sda9/isolinux and put this entry in /boot/grub/menu.1st:

title Install Fedora Core 11
root (hd0,8)
kernel /isolinux/vmlinuz0
initrd /isolinux/initrd0.img

What's wrong?

Why don't you run them in a virtual machine?
vmware, qemu, virtualbox....

Alright, please look at my example menu.lst compared to yours
Big thing you left out was "root=/dev/hda2"
Or root=/dev/hdxx where xx is whatever drive/partition you are putting it in.

I simply copied the contents of iso to hda2, which was a folder named "images" and a folder named "isolinux"
I then edited my menu.lst, which is in hda1, and added what's below to my menu.lst

And, as Repo, the master of mayhem said, try it in qemu or vbox, etc

Actually, that's what I was doing

I made a qemu-img, about 1gb, cfdisk'ed it with 3 partitions(hda1 ext3, hda2 ext3, hda3 swap), formatted it, turned on swap, copied iso to hda2,
created a boot/grub folders on hda1, used nano to make a menu.lst in hda1, installed grub to hda/hda1 with
"sudo grub"
"root (hd0,0)"
"setup (hd0)"
"quit"

and then shut it down and booted qemu off qemu-img, booted fed10
on hda2 and it found itself, and was proceeding with netinstall when I shut it down.

Doing it virtually is a good way to learn about the grubster
and installing, etc
Need any more help holler'

I got the same thing with root=/dev/hda9. I'll try qemu.

OH, did you try root=/dev/sda9 ?