Billprozac Posted April 7, 2005 Share Posted April 7, 2005 Well, I guess the title says it all. I saw some threads on other forums about using some boot files on a flash drive to mount and bot an ISO image from on the same drive. I want to do this from a CF card in an SFF pc. I need to boot from the CF card, but the ISO is a bootable CD and is not yet written to boot from flash. It then occured to me that a bootloader like this could be very useful for booting from any cd imagewithout having to burn a CD. This could even be used on a harddrive with multiple images which can be upgraded simpley by replacing the ISO file. Any thoughts? Here are the threads I read: http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin/forums/i...t=ST;f=5;t=4914 http://www.gibraltar.at/pipermail/gibralta...-June/002917.ht Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/305843-use-lilo-or-grub-to-mount-and-boot-from-iso/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
markwolfe Veteran Posted April 7, 2005 Veteran Share Posted April 7, 2005 Linux can mount an ISO image and treat it like a mounted device and read the files. You just have to find some way to boot an intial kernel, if I am not mistaken. I believe what you are thinking of is very doable in Linux. Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/305843-use-lilo-or-grub-to-mount-and-boot-from-iso/#findComment-585738103 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billprozac Posted April 7, 2005 Author Share Posted April 7, 2005 I am not very familiar with linux, yet, so this is a little over my head, but I did find this article about using grup to load and boot from a diskimage pulled from tftp, si it should be fairly similar. http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/Clone-HOWTO.html Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/305843-use-lilo-or-grub-to-mount-and-boot-from-iso/#findComment-585739677 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lechio Posted April 7, 2005 Share Posted April 7, 2005 It is possible to boot from an ISO using GRUB/LILO, but there is an alternative way. It envolves to make a previous extraction of the contents of the ISO to an HD partition. This is the procedure that is most commonly used to boot Live CD's from HD without the need to write them to a CD. Also running a LiveCD from HD, speeds up the system as the access speeds from an HD are not compared with the ones that CD drives have. Here's how to boot a LiveCD from HD (using grub, Knoppix [or knoppix based LiveCD iso] and a Linux system): -create a mountpoint to mount the ISO with loopback: mkdir /mnt/LiveISO -mount the image: mount -t iso9660 -o loop,ro /DOWNLOADS/Knoppix-3.7-en.iso /mnt/LiveISO -create a directory on the device where you are going to boot from: mkdir /mnt/hda4/KNOPPIX -copy the contents of the mounted image to that directory: cp /mnt/LiveISO/KNOPPIX/* /mnt/hda4/KNOPPIX/ -copy kernel and initrd files to yor boot device: cp /mnt/LiveISO/boot/* /boot/ -edit the menu.list located in /boot/grub and add an entry like this to it: title KNOPPIX root (hd0,0) kernel /linux26 ramdisk_size=100000 fromhd=/dev/hda4 initrd /minirt26.gz savedefault boot using LILO should be like this: image=/boot/linux26 initrd=/boot/minirt26.gz label=KNOPPIX append="ramdisk_size=100000 fromhd=/dev/hda4" This can also be done using an external device such as an USB storage device but GRUB or LILO has to be installed on it. It can even boot from a win partition by using a floppy with LILO/GRUB to boot it or adding an entry to the NT bootloader. Works with all the LiveCD's based on Knoppix, DSL, SLAX... (the fromhd cheatcode of SLAX is different from the one Knoppix uses). Not direct boot from an ISO image but pretty usefull to test out a new LiveCD without the need to burn it. here's a page for more options using similar techniques: http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Hd_Based_HowTo Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/305843-use-lilo-or-grub-to-mount-and-boot-from-iso/#findComment-585740612 Share on other sites More sharing options...
mailme_gx Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 Hey Lechio I have also considered this option but I have about 30 live CDs and am looking for a way to dynalically list and select one of them at boot time, mainly for trying out and testing diffrent distros. I have tried the qemu emulator, althoug it works well it is still a bit sluggish sometimes and sometimes the OS behaves diffrently on the actual Hardware Any info will be apriciated :) GX It is possible to boot from an ISO using GRUB/LILO, but there is an alternative way.It envolves to make a previous extraction of the contents of the ISO to an HD partition. This is the procedure that is most commonly used to boot Live CD's from HD without the need to write them to a CD. Also running a LiveCD from HD, speeds up the system as the access speeds from an HD are not compared with the ones that CD drives have. Here's how to boot a LiveCD from HD (using grub, Knoppix [or knoppix based LiveCD iso] and a Linux system): -create a mountpoint to mount the ISO with loopback: mkdir /mnt/LiveISO -mount the image: mount -t iso9660 -o loop,ro /DOWNLOADS/Knoppix-3.7-en.iso /mnt/LiveISO -create a directory on the device where you are going to boot from: mkdir /mnt/hda4/KNOPPIX -copy the contents of the mounted image to that directory: cp /mnt/LiveISO/KNOPPIX/* /mnt/hda4/KNOPPIX/ -copy kernel and initrd files to yor boot device: cp /mnt/LiveISO/boot/* /boot/ -edit the menu.list located in /boot/grub and add an entry like this to it: title ?KNOPPIX root ?(hd0,0) kernel ?/linux26 ramdisk_size=100000 fromhd=/dev/hda4 initrd ?/minirt26.gz savedefault boot using LILO should be like this: image=/boot/linux26 ? ? ? ?initrd=/boot/minirt26.gz ? ? ? ?label=KNOPPIX ? ? ? ?append="ramdisk_size=100000 fromhd=/dev/hda4" This can also be done using an external device such as an USB storage device but GRUB or LILO has to be installed on it. It can even boot from a win partition by using a floppy with LILO/GRUB to boot it or adding an entry to the NT bootloader. Works with all the LiveCD's based on Knoppix, DSL, SLAX... (the fromhd cheatcode of SLAX is different from the one Knoppix uses). Not direct boot from an ISO image but pretty usefull to test out a new LiveCD without the need to burn it. here's a page for more options using similar techniques: http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Hd_Based_HowTo 585740612[/snapback] Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/305843-use-lilo-or-grub-to-mount-and-boot-from-iso/#findComment-586533956 Share on other sites More sharing options...
_R2D2 Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 I have a iso of my windows xp2 slipsteam install. Would it be possible to do the same thing with that as with the linux distros? I have 2 free fat32 partitions that I can extract to. I'll try to make this work, but a helping hand would be nice. Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/305843-use-lilo-or-grub-to-mount-and-boot-from-iso/#findComment-586535347 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johny why Posted August 28, 2011 Share Posted August 28, 2011 -create a directory on the device where you are going to boot from: mkdir /mnt/hda4/KNOPPIX i don't see any hda's or sda's in /mnt or in /dev. what should i do? thanks Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/305843-use-lilo-or-grub-to-mount-and-boot-from-iso/#findComment-594267852 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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