USB Stick and ISO file booting

cslyon · n00b Joined: 21 Apr 2004 Posts: 68 Location: California

Maybe I am not looking it the right places because I think it is hard to believe that I am the only one trying to get this working but I have a usb stick which has GRUB loaded on it which is working without any problems. I was wonder if it is possible to have many ISO files on the boot directory (Gentoo LiveCD) being one of them and have GRUB or some other bootloader reference the ISO files to boot directly from the file.

I guess I could create many partitions for each ISO and just copy them off but why do that if there is a better way.

Any thoughts or experience with this?

d2_racing · Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 4:02 am Post subject:

I think that you cannot boot from a iso file...

cslyon · n00b Joined: 21 Apr 2004 Posts: 68 Location: California

I am thinking that you are right but when I see posts like this one:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/booting-of-raw-iso-from-grublilo-though-preferably-grub-367901/#post2848902

That have this content I wonder.

grub> map (hdX,Y)/your.iso (hdZ)
grub> map --rehook
grub> chainloader (hdZ)+1
grub> rootnoverify (hdZ)
grub> boot

They did say in the post that it didn't work but I have seen a few of these kinds of posts. None with a definitive answer.

d2_racing · Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 11:42 am Post subject:

But how the iso is decompress and how grub can make the iso bootable ? That's the question.