Re: GRUB2 facility to boot ISOs?

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@ubuntu.com>]

On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 05:12:17PM +1000, Philip Rhoades wrote:
> I started this thread quite a while ago (I have asked LQ why it has  
> another user's name on it):
>
> http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/booting-of-raw-iso-from-grub-lilo-though-preferably-grub-367901/
>
> but haven't ever gotten a workable response.  I realise that ISOs from  
> different distros are set up differently but is it a feasible/desirable  
> feature to think about for GRUB2?

GRUB is entirely capable of reading the kernel and initrd from an ISO
using its loopback module, but after that the OS starts up with
basically bare metal and a set of command-line arguments, and it's up to
it to figure out how to mount its root filesystem.  There's no way for
GRUB to give it any more help than it already does.

(That said, we've talked about trying to establish a standard whereby an
OS can advertise to GRUB that it supports this so that appropriate
configuration stanzas can be generated automatically, and this may
happen.)

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson@ubuntu.com]