Arch Linux

alcafar

Member

From: Italy

Registered: 2008-03-23

Posts: 47

Booting from an iso image on the hard drive

In the LFS LiveCD documentation, I found the following procedure:

BOOTING FROM ISO IMAGE

If you want to boot this CD on a computer without a CD-ROM drive, follow the steps below.

Store the ISO image of this CD as a file on a partition formatted with one of the following filesystems: vfat, ntfs, ext2, ext3, ext4, jfs, reiserfs, reiser4, xfs

Copy the boot/isolinux/{linux,initramfs_data.cpio.gz} files from the CD to your hard disk

Configure the boot loader to load "linux" as a kernel image and "initramfs_data.cpio.gz" as an initrd. The following parameters have to be passed to the kernel:

rw root=iso:/dev/XXX:/path/to/lfslivecd.iso rootfstype=fs_type

where /dev/XXX is a partition where you stored the LiveCD image, and fs_type is the type of the filesystem on that partition. You may also want to add "rootflags=…" option if mounting this partition requires special flags.

I succeeded to do it for LFS, but not for Knoppix and I don't know why. Here's what I did:
1) Mounted the iso

sudo mount -o loop KNOPPIX_V5.1.1CD-2007-01-04-EN.iso ~/temp

2) Copied the boot directory to the hard drive

cp -r ~/temp/boot ~/boot

$ ls ~/boot/isolinux/
balder.img  boot.msg   f2  german.kbd  isolinux.bin  linux    memtest
boot.cat    cdrom.ico  f3  index.html  isolinux.cfg  logo.16  minirt.gz

3) Edited /boot/grub/menu.lst

# (5) iso
title  Knoppix
kernel (hd0,5)/cafarell/boot/isolinux/linux rw root=iso:/dev/sda6:/cafarell/iso/KNOPPIX_V5.1.1CD-2007-01-04-EN.iso rootfstype=ext3
initrd (hd0,5)/cafarell/boot/isolinux/minirt.gz

The kernel is loaded, but I end with a kernel panic. Paths and devices are correct.
Any idea?

Hohoho

Member

Registered: 2007-06-23

Posts: 222

Re: Booting from an iso image on the hard drive

I'd check if its really sda6 and not hda6, some distros still use hda for hard drives.
I assume (hd0,5) is the home partition? If not check the paths.
You can try omitting "rw" or "rootfstype=..."
Otherwise I fail to see anything wrong.