Arch Linux

indianahorst

Member

Registered: 2008-08-23

Posts: 127

Booting ISO inside multi-boot USB using GRUB2

Hello,

I'm trying to setup a multiboot USB key. Parted Magic and SystemRescueCD went fine, boot the Arch Live ISO doesn't work.

According to https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=162179 and https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GR … _from_GRUB the following solution should work, but it doesn't.
I still get the "30 seconds" error:

Setup a loop device from /boot/iso/archlinux-2013.06.01-dual.iso located at device /dev/disk/by-label/multiboot
Mounting '/dev/disk/by-label/multiboot' to '/run/archiso/img_dev'
Waiting 30 seconds for device /dev/disk/by-label/multiboot ...
ERROR: /dev/disk/by-label/multiboot did not show up after 30 seconds.... 

Label of the FAT32 partition is "multiboot". USB device is /dev/sdb1.
My grub.cfg looks like this:

menuentry "Parted Magic 2013_05_01 i686" {
  loopback loop /boot/iso/pmagic_2013_05_01.iso
  linux (loop)/pmagic/bzImage iso_filename=/boot/iso/pmagic_2013_05_01.iso
  initrd (loop)/pmagic/initrd.img
}

menuentry "Parted Magic 2013_05_01 x86_64" {
  loopback loop /boot/iso/pmagic_2013_05_01.iso
  linux (loop)/pmagic/bzImage64 iso_filename=/boot/iso/pmagic_2013_05_01.iso
  initrd (loop)/pmagic/initrd.img
}

menuentry "SystemRescueCD 3.6.0 i686" {
  loopback loop /boot/iso/systemrescuecd-x86-3.6.0.iso
  linux (loop)/isolinux/rescue32 isoloop=/boot/iso/systemrescuecd-x86-3.6.0.iso
  initrd (loop)/isolinux/initram.igz
}

menuentry "SystemRescueCD 3.6.0 amd64" {
  loopback loop /boot/iso/systemrescuecd-x86-3.6.0.iso
  linux (loop)/isolinux/rescue64 isoloop=/boot/iso/systemrescuecd-x86-3.6.0.iso
  initrd (loop)/isolinux/initram.igz
}

menuentry "Archlinux-2013.06.01-dual.iso" --class iso {
  set iso="/boot/iso/archlinux-2013.06.01-dual.iso"
  loopback loop $iso
  set root=(loop)
  linux /arch/boot/x86_64/vmlinuz archisolabel=ARCH_201306 img_dev=/dev/disk/by-label/multiboot img_loop=$iso earlymodules=loop
  initrd /arch/boot/x86_64/archiso.img
}
 

Any hints?

TheSaint

Member

From: my computer

Registered: 2007-08-19

Posts: 1,523

Re: Booting ISO inside multi-boot USB using GRUB2

Look for memdisk
You should prepare Isolinux to load the memdisk module and the line should be like

 # Boot Hardware Detection Tool from floppy image
 LABEL hdt_floppy
  LINUX memdisk
  INITRD hdt.img

 # Boot Hardware Detection Tool from iso image (with 'iso' parameter)
 LABEL hdt_iso
  LINUX memdisk
  INITRD hdt.iso
  APPEND iso

 # Boot DOS from floppy image (with 'raw' parameter)
 LABEL dos_floppy_with_raw
  LINUX memdisk
  INITRD dosboot.img
  APPEND raw

However it'd be better to check at its wiki page for the other bootloaders.
I'm joining here because I didn't get the right way to do it, yet.

---

do it good first, it will be faster than do it twice the saint

TheSaint

Member

From: my computer

Registered: 2007-08-19

Posts: 1,523

Re: Booting ISO inside multi-boot USB using GRUB2

I used like your method and it works. For one iso.
I encounter some problem because of the video card (Nvidia). So after the first black screens I put insmod efi_gop and added nomodeset to the linux line

---

do it good first, it will be faster than do it twice the saint