Booting from multiple iso images on hard drive.

[deschiff]

My complements to all for a GREAT site!

Does anyone know of a project to make a boot CD that lets you search for iso images on HD, then loop mount, copy proper kernel, and then boot the image of choice from the hard drive?

[nick]

Somewhat, you can do that from the prompt knoppix gives you before it boots. Check out the knoppix cheatcodes here: http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Cheat_Codes

bootfrom=/dev/hda1/KNX.iso
Access image, boot from ISO-Image. - Knoppix V3.4


NOTE: bootfrom needs access to a running Knoppix-System with the same Kernel as the Bootkernel, before it is able to mount the partition / ISO-Image. This should allow a poor mans install from NTFS-Partitions and makes it also possible to boot an ISO-Image directly. You can also use wildcards in the ISO-Filename, but it must be unique. So: If you have just one KNOPPIX.iso on /dev/hda1 you can access it as: bootfrom=/dev/hda1/K*.iso, but if there are several, you need to make clear, which one you want. (Feature added by Fabian Franz.)
CAUTION: The 2.4 kernel that is in the KNOPPIX 3.4 CD does not support the ext3 filesystem so make sure that the ISO is stored in an ext2 filesystem.

[deschiff]

Knnopix was the seed inspiration for this idea I have of boxen with a collection of favorate livecd images to choose from at boot.
I'm not up to reworking Knnopix source code, so I decided to ask around and make sure I wasn't trying to reinvent the wheel.