Installing from ISOs without burning them?
 

I am currently using redhat 9 but i would like to try out some of the other distros I have downloaded.

I was just wondering if I could do this by copying the ISO images to the hard disk, then maybe change a config file, then reboot the system and have the ISO images boot up?

Is this possible, first of all.

Then, second, can I install another distro over another from the hard disk? Will it have to format the disk and if it does, will it (or should i say can it!) keep the ISO images and format the rest (I dont think so, but you never know with Linux!).

Thanks a lot,

Jamie --- Proudly South African

You can install Linux from the iso image files. the procedure is pretty easy and all you need to di is
1. Make the partition and dump the isos there
2. when installing just give the location of the isos. Search LQ and you will find more info.

No you cannot change any setting and make the iso images boot. You have to install linux onto the hard disc. OR you can try Knoppix which is a bootable Linux distro and you dont have to install it.

You can install one linux distro over the other but ppl who have tried this dont recommend it. You should format the partition and then install the new os.

oh well, thanks anyway. I see you are using Fedora, is it worth downloading? i.e. is it better than Redhat (9) or is it just Redhat with a different name?

If I understand you correctly, you want to save an ISO image to your harddrive and make your bootloader (such as LiLo) boot from it. You possibly could make a system boot an ISO image that is on your harddrive, but it isn't really worth the effort. My guess is that you wold have to create an initial ram disk that mounts the partition on which the ISO resides, then mounts the ISO image as a loopback device, and then finds/runs the install script from the mounted ISO image. Not worth the hassle.

Many distros allow you to install from an ISO image anyway - certainly Mandrake does. Mount the ISO image as a loopback device (#mount file.iso -o loop /mnt/mountpoint) and check out the bootfloppies available for it.

Or you could just burn it to CDRW :D

I'd say it is just RH with a different name :) I have not noticed anything different from RH9 thus far.

Cheers

I downloaded lm10.0 beta1 iso's. They checked ok with md5sum. I tried to install from hd from those iso's and the install program could not find the /mandrake/base directory it was looking for, so I tried putting in the whole MandrakeLinux-10.0-beta1.i586.iso and it could find it, then I followed the directions of LinuxLala

"You can install Linux from the iso image files. the procedure is pretty easy and all you need to di is
1. Make the partition and dump the isos there
2. when installing just give the location of the isos. "

by putting the iso's in root directory of my hda1 (fat32) and no success. Could somebody please spell out what I have to do to make the installl from iso's. Now I made the floppy to boot from hd, but all I had was lm9.2 cd to create the boot disk, so then that was a problem too.

- I burned 3 cdr's and they are not (first I tried to do it with cdrw, but seems like the cdrw is not big enough so noting was put on cd1 - I use nero btw.)

Cheers

I use lm9.2 on a compaq presario 2175ca laptop and since my pcmcia and power management don't work I'm eager to try lm10.0beta1 hoping the new 2.6.1 kernel will help.

Use the hd.img floppy image if you want to installed from saved ISO files. Then boot using this floppy.

I did that jschiwal, but it couldn't find what it was looking for?

I selected hda1 where the iso's are (and some other files) in root directory of fat32 partition. Do I have to type anything special on the line where it says directory or iso image?

Thanks

stupid question
 

I've read the questions and answers on this thread,
I have a question:
When you put the ISO file on it's own partition, did you put it in a directory,
or just on it's own in that partition?

Because if it's in, let's say, C:\myISOfile\file.ISO
and when you mount, you only point to hdaX and the .ISO file, when you really should be pointing to hdaX\myISOfile\
or rather just put the .ISO file in hdaX

Am I making any sense?

Well, I just know that I've had problems with little details such as this 'back in the day'.


hope this helps
//Santiago Winnipeg, canada

This is the problem. You should have made the partition as ext2 or ext3.

Check out
http://www.thinkdigit.com/howto.html

Thank you kindly, now I know it has to be a linux partition!

Thanks!

No problem. Glad to be of service man.

Cheers.

this is what I want to do too!

Can you please tell me how to do this if you know it?

but my laptop doesnt have a floppy drive :(

Installing with ISOs, but without burning them!
 

This is my post and I hope it helps, just yesterday I do this with the ISOs of Slackware 12, because I don't have CD/DVD writer and even any diskette on hand.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=566812

I think that if your distribution have an usbboot.img image to write it to an usb pendrive and then allow you to boot from it, and in the instalation menu, a category to load the instalation files from a folder in the harddisk, this can help you.

Regards! and good luck!

You might want to look at the GRUB2 project. The 1.96 release is supposed to handle booting ISO images. (Note: I've never tried it, nor even installed GRUB2, so . . .)

Not exactly true...Slackware is just one kind of Linux, nothing god like.

Another reason, besides not having cd burners, to use iso images without burning them is that you save discs. Until a few weeks ago I was frustrated at using rw discs because I though I need a cd-rw of 700MB to burn cd images and in addition two DVD discs (DVD+RW and DVD-RW for both kinds of drives) in order to be able to install with all kinds of drives. Then I found out a nice app (imgburn if you're on Windows) that lets you burn cd images onto dvd...very nice, no need to use cdrw anymore ;)

I'd like to add that even if the installer doesn't directly have an option for "loading media from iso images" or so, it's probably possible. Slackware, as many others, offer you terminals behind the setup program that you can use to find, mount and use external resources that the installer doesn't include; therefore it's easy to install packages not asked during setup before rebooting (for example build a custom kernel right away). So if the installer doesn't seem to support installing from isos, you haven't lost anything if you were able to boot :) try CTRL+ALT+F1 trough F6, and if you get a login terminal, you're on your way..

Hi!..

To respond the first:
I used "burning" like say "write", not the process that leads to an "unusable" disc.. just for clear..
And... I don't do all that I mentioned in the "tutorial" just because I want to save discs, just because I dont have any drive to burn them..and this is the "idea".
But thanks anyway, is good to know about the software you mentioned..
Thanks for the program "tip"!

And for the second.. At the slackware setup, I have tried to make that you say.. to make it "read" from a mounted iso image, but at least for me, the setup could'n "see" the package files, and I have tried a lot!, so.. the solution -for me- at that moment, was what I described...

Regards!