Booting installer from iso (with GRUB)

[Neds Moar Salt]

I want to boot the installer from it's iso from GRUB2. I used the 'loopback' command to mount the iso in grub, but when I boot the iso it tries to load things off of the cd that is not even in the drive rather than the image. It says "Unable to read sr0". I think I need to trick grub/ubuntu into thinking the iso is the cd. How do I do this?

[darkod]

Does it have to be from grub2? I wanted a bootable usb stick with both 32bit and 64bit ubuntu install files on it, and after lots of experimenting I solved it by putting grub1 on the stick, extracting the ISOs and I can give you the commands I used to directly invoke the installer (I can also directly start Live Mode).

But I don't know to adjust them for grub2.

[Neds Moar Salt]

Does it have to be from grub2? I wanted a bootable usb stick with both 32bit and 64bit ubuntu install files on it, and after lots of experimenting I solved it by putting grub1 on the stick, extracting the ISOs and I can give you the commands I used to directly invoke the installer (I can also directly start Live Mode).

But I don't know to adjust them for grub2.

I have already done that, but I don't want to extract the files.

[Neds Moar Salt]

nevermind... It wasn't fixed.

[kadok0520]

would you mind teaching us how to boot installer from iso ? thank you in advance

[ghaspias]

If have these entries (some work , others don't). (hd0,1) is a ntfs partition where I keep the isos.


menuentry "Ubuntu Lucid netbook 32bit" {
root (hd0,1)
loopback loop0 /ubuntu-10.04-netbook-i386.iso
set root=(loop0)
linux /casper/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda1 loop=/ubuntu-10.04-netbook-i386.iso file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu-netbook.seed boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/ubuntu-10.04-netbook-i386.iso quiet splash --
initrd (loop0)/casper/initrd.lz
}

menuentry "Ubuntu Lucid beta2 32bit" {
root (hd0,1)
loopback loop /testdrive/iso/lucid-desktop-i386.iso
linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/testdrive/iso/lucid-desktop-i386.iso quiet splash --
initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz
}

menuentry "Linux Mint 8 (Helena)" {
root (hd0,1)
loopback loop /LinuxMint-8.iso
linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz file=/cdrom/preseed/mint.seed boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/LinuxMint-8.iso quiet splash --
initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz
}

menuentry "Fedora 13 beta" {
root (hd0,1)
loopback loop /F13-Beta-i686-Live.iso
linux (loop)/isolinux/vmlinuz0 boot=isolinux root=live:LABEL=F13-Beta-i686-Live rootfstype=auto ro liveimg root=/dev/sda1 --
initrd (loop)/isolinux/initrd0.img
}

menuentry "Fedora 13 beta_" {
root (hd0,1)
loopback loop /F13-Beta-i686-Live.iso
linux (loop)/isolinux/vmlinuz0 boot=isolinux root=live:/F13-Beta-i686-Live.iso rootfstype=auto ro liveimg rdinitdebug rdshell rhgb rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_MD noiswmd --
initrd (loop)/isolinux/initrd0.img
}


If someone can get Fedora running please share...

[ghaspias]

... also, did you consider using
usb-creator with a disk image (instead of a real usb device)?
Then use the method above to boot it.

[valentt]

This is the bug you are looking for: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=557426

Fedora has some issues with multi-boot usb scenarions, but we will soon have an answer.

You can mount fedora iso and copy fedora files to a special folder and then use standard boot methods.