Running LIVE CD from hard disk, i.e. copying the iso on HD & then booting the same
 

I know that it sounds a bit stupid but i have very specfic need of running the live CD from the HARD DISK without installing it & without having need for a CD.

To be more precise, I want that once i copy a LiveCD iso to my harddisk, i should be able to boot from that iso on my harddisk, while keeping iso intact.

One way I think, that it could be done is that syslinux instead of booting from CDROM , boots from the .iso on my hard disk, but i dont know really how to go about it.

Any help would be highly appreciated.

There isn't really a good way to do this... what exactly are you trying to do? There could be a work around... either copying the iso to a partition (which may or may not work) or just mounting the iso and chroot into it (which is almost like booting it... kinda).

to the best of my knowledge,i dont think its possible. but then again i cud be wrong. iam curious how to do this. its a good idea.

Why i want it?

1. Live CD is a read only media, os if any thing goes wrong i.e. virus attack, trojans, rootkits, filesystem error, you hafta just reboot
2. What will I do with the HDD that comes by default with branded PC?
3. When Live CD is kept up for 24X7, then CD and the poor drive will get screwed up in no time. :-(
4. The performance will increase in case system runs from HDD rather than CD drive
5. Why i dont install Linux simply ? refer to 1.

>>mounting the iso and chroot into it (which is almost like booting it... kinda).
You will see just two files this way that too .gz which are good for nothing unless you boot from it, because its about 2G of data which is uncompressed on the fly as need arises.

Anymore suggestions :-)

If you have the iso on the hard drive, in a filsystem, then you will have the usual risks.

However, maybe I'm just lucky but never had any of those problems anyway. I do keep a current backup though.

I have done it with Klax and Wolvix.

The instruction is as per Wolvix site suggested for putting the Live CD onto a hard disk.

I did it just to boost the number of systems in the box to pass the 100 mark, as I ran out installable systems.

Personally I think it is far better to install a Live CD that comes with an installer. When you are not log in as the root user Linux is pretty safe from attack and in a world totally different from Windoze.

Putting a Live CD Linux onto a hard drive means you have to install its boot loader somewhere and that is as good as installing the distro formally and properly into a hard disk.

Mepis does this...

You can always use a system emulator like QEMU to run the ISO image, which would leave it intact. If you're already running a Linux system, you can even use KQEMU, AKA the QEMU Accelerator, to get rid of a good portion of the slowdown normally attributed to emulated systems.

Thanks , wolvix allows you to have nocd boot option .
But about the others , I think a third party bootloader must be installed and an iso extraction must be done to ensure the need.

Do post in links related to this , if found effective and useful...

Adding in , some of the live cds like damn small linux allows you to install the distro into your hdd.
But as your requirement is , even i am interested in knowing of a readonly distro booting from hdd so that i can host websites without any worries and security concerns.

It is possible to do it but without an iso file. I've done it with my live dynebolic cd
copying it all to a folder in the root directory and just hacking your lilo or grub loader

below is the link on how to do it with dynebolic maybe it works with other live distros why don't you give it a try?

dynebolic install on hard disk

just use cygwin if you wanna learn - else go in for vmware - vmware seems to be best solution in given case.

mepis - dunno - will love to know how mepis does this.

@vangelis
Chief , your idea seems good, I will try it out soon and let all know the results.

Everybody else,Thanks for the help!
But I know what vmware ESX/GSX/workstation, QEMU, Cygwin to microsoft virtual PC is..... , however I dont want them to be installed at first place, my problem is that I dont want to have any other OS installed other than one single iso [see reply #4 in this thread], which means everything works as a live CD, however you dont need to have a CDROM, for other users to mess with and also installing any kind of emulator on a host OS means users still have a host OS to mess with.

I know my requirements are quite strange, but that's how life is....

For Knoppix, It's possible too.
When you insert a disc and reboot , You can do something like

knoppix tohd=/dev/hda1 <-- this will copy CD Files to Windows C:\ but it won't work with NTFS.

And if you want it to read data from C:\ just type

knoppix fromhd=/dev/hda1 , But you stil need Knoppix CD if you want to boot your linux...