how to Install linux from an iso image?

treschen · 01-19-2010, 08:27 AM

Hi all

I am quite new to linux and keen on learning how to use linux, currently i am learning from the cbt nuggets videos, i have a old pc at home which has Red Hat installed on it, my question is how do i dual boot suse and red hat together ? i have red hat installed on a physical 40GB ide hard drive and i want to install suse on another 200gb hard drive which i have lying around. i am gonna have to install suse from an iso image i have, i dont have a dvd rom drive in the pc, so how would i go about installing it from an iso and also being able to dual boot between suse and red hat ?

All help is much appreciated,

Thanks!

SethsdadtheLinuxer · 01-19-2010, 09:18 AM

Strictly speaking, you can't install directly from an ISO image; you have to either burn to media (CD/DVD/USB Stick) and boot from that or mount once you've booted from other media. As for question #2, that's pretty simple. Just modify /boot/grub/menu.lst on your redhat to boot the suse from drive 2 (/dev/sda3??).

colorpurple21859 · 01-19-2010, 09:53 AM

Have never try to install suse from iso, so don't know what is reguired to get it to work, however this is general synopsis of how to do install from iso. Depending on the iso the basic way is too create a directory in the top directy, extract out the kernel and initrd files from the iso and copy to directory, setup grub to boot kernel and initrd. Problems usually encounter are 1.all iso won,t work some after booting still look for dvd/cd drive to install from. 2.Iso has to be in top directory, or totally extracted out, or premounted before installation. 3.special parameters have to be enter on kernel line of grub to get installation from iso to work.

linus72 · 01-19-2010, 10:01 AM

um

I boot many distros off my ext3 partitions in lieu of burning to disc or usb

I extract the iso to the partition, look at the isolinux.cfg, convert it to grub menu.lst
and then add entry to menu.lst and boot it as livecd/usb

it works with most but never tried suse

can you post contents of iso and also the isolinux.cfg in iso?

you can extract iso as user with app "isomaster"

thorkelljarl · 01-19-2010, 10:35 AM

If you can download...

If you can get the openSUSE 11.2 DVD onto your HDD, I believe you should be able to use unetbootin to have the image file boot as if it were on a drive.

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/#other

jschiwal · 01-19-2010, 10:41 AM

Actually, you can install openSuSE from an ISO image. You need to give the location of the iso which could be in a directory or a samba share. The trick is booting the installer.

If it is located in your home directory of your fedora installation, that would be fine.

Mount the iso and look at the install pdf in the /docu/ directory. Look at 1.2.1 for instructions on booting with hard drive.

Quote:

Hard Disk openSUSE installation can also be booted from the hard disk.
To do this, copy the kernel (linux) and the installation system
(initrd) from the directory /boot/architecture/ on the instal-
lation media to the hard disk and add an appropriate entry to
the existing boot loader of a previous openSUSE installation.

So you could copy these two files from the image and add an entry in /etc/grub/menu.lst or bootup, and enter the grub shell. Then enter a "kernel ..." and "initrd .." line. Then enter the command boot. You can use tab completion to enter the files you copied to /boot/.

After booting you can select the ISO file as the installation source.