

Booting ISO images from within GRUB2 - mikagrml
http://michael-prokop.at/blog/2011/01/07/booting-iso-images-from-within-grub2/

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ComputerGuru
If you're a Windows user, you can use EasyBCD to add a bootable ISO to the
boot menu by just pointing and clicking: <http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1>

/shameless plug

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danieldk
Somewhat related, and also interesting is the possibility to boot a Linux
distribution over the net:

<http://boot.kernel.org/>

Adding gpxe to a GRUB menu as an item may prove to be another great way to
boot a rescue system. Note that I didn't try this yet (only booting
installation media with b.k.org).

~~~
mrud
This service is great but as it does not verify any data so you basically just
download data via http and run it as your operating system. Just install a
live system on your usb pen and use it or run a live system and setup the
network boot environment.

<http://grml.org> for example can create a pxe boot environment from the live
system, just run grml-terminalserver and it will start a dhcp/nfs/tftp server
and provide all necessary data.

P.S: I am involved with grml so take it with a grain of salt

~~~
danieldk
True. However, that should be a motivation to make that service more secure.
But it does not make the idea flawed. It's very convenient to be able to boot
any distribution just like that, without preparing USB sticks or CDs.

By the way, thank you for your work on grml!

~~~
wladimir
I guess it could be made pretty secure with good old code signing. Most
distributions already sign their packages, but as this concerns the booting
process it could be somewhat more difficult.

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iwwr
Is it possible to boot a generic OS (not necessarily linux or windows) from
USB by simply loading a live-CD image file?

Use case: one USB drive with custom MBR, one text configuration file and one
or more liveCD images. On boot-up, the user selects one of the images and
loads that generic OS.

~~~
mrud
For a detailed description what image will boot with the memdisk method see
[http://syslinux.zytor.com/wiki/index.php/MEMDISK#INT_13h_acc...](http://syslinux.zytor.com/wiki/index.php/MEMDISK#INT_13h_access:_Not_all_images_will_boot_completely.21)

DOS (MS-DOS, FreeDOS, DR-DOS, ...), Windows 95/98/ME and boot loaders
(Syslinux, grub, grub4dos, gujin, gag, mbldr, ...) boots, other operating
systems must be aware of the memory mapping.

With SuperGrub2Disk <http://www.supergrubdisk.org/wiki/SuperGRUB2Disk> you
just have to add a iso file into a specific folder and it will automatically
be added to the bootloader menu. But AFAIK it does currently not support the
memdisk solution.

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waterhouse
I recently tried to do something like this to install Debian (already having
Ubuntu on this computer) without using a USB drive or blank CD. Didn't
succeed. So I'm glad to see this submission; I'll probably try it out in the
near future.

~~~
mrud
Try network boot. Setup a pxe environment and you should be good to go.

Another solution is use debootstrap to install Debian or Ubuntu to a plain
directory. Be aware that you have to make some adjustments to the system (like
installing a bootloader/kernel/adjust fstab etc.) after executing debootstrap.
You can also use grml-debootstrap which automatically executes the needed
steps to make a system bootable.

