[Ilugc] Boot ISOs wthout buring them
- From: vijairaj.r@xxxxxxxxx (Vijairaj)
- Date: Sun Aug 27 21:27:13 2006
On 8/27/06, Kumar Appaiah <akumar@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dear ILUGC,
I have a few ISO images of various GNU/Linux and BSD installer CDs
(minimal). I was wondering whether I could use GRUB to boot them from
my existing GNU/Linux system, avoiding the need to burn them onto a CD
to start the installation procedure. Is there a way to do this?
Definitely possible, I have installed that way many times.
The procedure is like this:
1. loop mount the iso image and copy the kernel, ramdisk image, and the
modules to some partition accessible from grub.
2. Find out the options to be passed to the kernel. Its listed in
isolinux/isolinux.cfg in the dapper iso image, it might be differet for
others.
3. Reboot the system and enter the grub command prompt.
4. Boot the kernel with the options noted down in step 2.
eg:
root (hd0, 6)
kernel /iso/vmlinuz boot=casper ramdisk_size=1048576 root=/dev/ram rw quiet
splash --
initrd /iso/initrd.gz
boot
5. After booting, the kernel will probe for cdrom devices and will fail and
will probably drop you in a rescue shell.
6. From the rescue shell, you can use losetup to link the loop device to the
iso image and then create a link /dev/cdrom pointing to the loop device. You
might require to insmod the 'loop' module if its not already present.
7. Continue with the installation.
This procedure worked for Debian & Ubuntu atleast but it should be possible
with others as well. You can always customize the ramdisk if needed.
--
Warm Regards,
Vijairaj
Other related posts:
