Multiboot CD-ROM via Grub4DOS External links Options

[was_jaclaz]

Sorry, I don't undertand clearly so far.

You must go a few pages back to see how it all started.

SamK is trying to make a number of Linux based mini-distro's bootable through grub4dos.

The current parted magic works because, as seen on this thread:
http://partedmagic.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&p=663
Patrick Verner was so kind as to slightly modify the distro.
So the "original" problem is already solved, at least for this instance.

No a graft-point redirect input to another output.

I stand corrected , I over-simplified the matter as a similitude to hopefully give SamK an easy way to "visualize" the concept.

jaclaz

[SamK]

(Extracted from post 16 http://partedmagic.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=151)
...Just imagine, you download ANY Linux based .iso or .img image, put it in a folder together with ANY other, make easily a menu.lst then run mkisofs with grldr as no-emulation bootsector and you have your Multiboot DVD ready...

(The following are all extracts from this thread http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=4902)
...I will repeat myself for the hmmmth time, there is NO one-size-fits-all solution for .iso images. (yet)...

...the point is that every Linux distro is somewhat "focused" on a certain way of booting, and this is not necessarily "universal"...

...UNLESS the maker of the distro made it in such a way that it is ALREADY bootable from inside a .img or a .iso, it WILL NOT work "as is" in such a format through grub4dos or ANY OTHER bootloader...

...As said that you need to "adapt" what does not work "as is"....

...with Linux it should be prolly easy to have the "real" mode part of the booting auto-mount the .img or .iso and thus continue booting using "protected mode" native drivers and accessing perfectly allright the files in the image...

...Patrick Verner was so kind as to slightly modify the (PARTED MAGIC) distro...

...Remember that Patrick has been EXCEPTIONALLY present and positive in his attitude towards our requests and comments, Authors of other distro's or minidistro's may not be as much available to this kind of requests/suggestions...

...Ideally IF and WHEN we find a practical use for this feature...

At the present stage of development of Grub4DOS, the ability to boot ISOs depends upon the willingness of the distro developer to produce it in a Grub4DOS aware state, or for the end user to have sufficient skill to modify it to become usable by Grub4DOS.

It is unlikely that all developers will want to adapt their distro to Grub4DOS. Currently this leaves the route of user modification.

The present exploration may result in a process of modifying an ISO that is applicable to a wide range of distros and thereby represent a more standardized method. This repeatability is thereby a means of removing some of the 'hit and miss' which is involved in directly booting ISOs at the moment. Possibly the modification might able to be conducted by some form of interactive script, making it usable by less technically able users.

This may be seen as an application of the Grub4DOS technology rather than an inherent function of it.

[e2p2]

Here is a GRUB4DOS section that I am currently using to run Parted Magic 3.0 from the pmagic-svn.iso. The was pulled off of the Parted Magic forum and slightly modified. I have tested it on both a USB Thumb drive and CD, both worked fine. I used the latest ISO available from http://partedmagic.com/beef_drapes/.

CODE

find --set-root /boot/IMG/pmagic-svn.iso
map /boot/IMG/pmagic-svn.iso (hd32)
map --hook
root (hd32)
kernel (hd32)/pmagic/bzImage noapic root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc keymap=us livecd vga=791 sleep=0 ramdisk_size=25000 noeject iso_location=/boot/IMG/pmagic-svn.iso
initrd (hd32)/pmagic/initrd

[ktp]

@e2p2
Thank you, it works well.

[ktp]

For your information, I read somewhere that USB U3 key (which has a CDFS partition built-in in hardware) can be used
to boot as CD on computers which do not have CD/DVD reader (like the ultra-notebooks or the new netbooks). The trick is to
use a specific software (customizer) to put the desired ISO image to the CDFS partition normally used for U3 Launchpad.
You can revert back to U3 launchpad by using the manufacturer U3 Launchpad ISO image.

[was_jaclaz]

For your information, I read somewhere .....

"somewhere" is a bit vague....

There is a prolly newish thread about this here:
http://www.msfn.org/board/Install-XP-from-...th-t121502.html



jaclaz

[e2p2]

The U3 Method to get XP Install working off of a USB Stick works very well. It makes the U3 USB device appear to be a CD-ROM drive, this means that the computer will need to support booting off of a USB CD-ROM drive.

[dlevens]

Here is a GRUB4DOS section that I am currently using to run Parted Magic 3.0 from the pmagic-svn.iso. The was pulled off of the Parted Magic forum and slightly modified. I have tested it on both a USB Thumb drive and CD, both worked fine. I used the latest ISO available from http://partedmagic.com/beef_drapes/.

CODE

find --set-root /boot/IMG/pmagic-svn.iso
map /boot/IMG/pmagic-svn.iso (hd32)
map --hook
root (hd32)
kernel (hd32)/pmagic/bzImage noapic root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc keymap=us livecd vga=791 sleep=0 ramdisk_size=25000 noeject iso_location=/boot/IMG/pmagic-svn.iso
initrd (hd32)/pmagic/initrd

This was working great, but trying this on version 3.2 of parted magic the system freezes just before it loads the XFCE desktop. I was able to get it to work by changing the code to use xvesa, but all of my attempts to configure xorg failed. xorg on 3.0 worked great with vesa driver, 24bit, 1024x768. But no combo of xorg works on 3.2 for some reason.

Here is the code that works for 3.2 (I downloaded the normal iso pmagic-3.2.iso.zip)

CODE

title Parted Magic 3.2
find --set-root /boot/images/pmagic-3.2.iso
map /boot/images/pmagic-3.2.iso (hd32)
map --hook
root (hd32)
kernel /pmagic/bzImage noapic root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc keymap=us livecd vga=791 sleep=0 quiet xvesa tmpfs_size=180M ramdisk_size=25000 noeject iso_location=/boot/images/pmagic-3.2.iso
initrd /pmagic/initrd

also I get this error just after the two penguins
usb 2-1: device not accepting address 2, error -71
hub 2-0:1,0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 1

then things continue to load as normal

Dennis

[was_jaclaz]

Why not using pmagic-grub4dos-3.2.iso.zip ?

Or does it have the same problems?

Could it be related to the 300 Mb requisite?:
http://forums.partedmagic.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=22

The PartedMagic Forum is back on (it was down and unfortunately all old data appears to be lost), you could pose your question directly there to Patrick:
http://forums.partedmagic.com/

jaclaz

[dlevens]

Why not using pmagic-grub4dos-3.2.iso.zip ?

Or does it have the same problems?

Could it be related to the 300 Mb requisite?:
http://forums.partedmagic.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=22

The PartedMagic Forum is back on (it was down and unfortunately all old data appears to be lost), you could pose your question directly there to Patrick:
http://forums.partedmagic.com/

jaclaz

Both versions have the same problem. Not releated to the 300mb issue, as I have 4gb of ram. This appears to be a driver issue or display issue. Using xvesa works for now so not going to pursue it further.

Dennis