Re: Boot an ISO on an external/internal HD partition.

[Marco Gerards <mgerards@xs4all.nl>]

Phil <philbert@internode.on.net> writes:

> Hi all,  my name's phil and i'm not a programmer - other than writing
> perl scripts to make my working day easier - but i haven't joined this
> list as a coding member.  I had an idea that i thought should go
> public to see if it was possible to do.  In short my idea is this:
>
> Have a Fat32 partition that can have a bootable ISO stored on it -
> Fat32 for Win/Linux compatibility - that can itself be booted.
> eliminating the need to burn disks and eliminating the possibility of
> read errors through dust, finger prints or misuse.

Sorry, but this unfortunately possible in a general way.  The only
thing that is possible is loading files from an ISO 9660 filesystem
that is stored in another filesystem (the situation like you
described).  But loading a file is not enough to boot an OS, the OS
just does not understand what is going on.

So if you want an OS stored on a ISO 9660 image to understand such
setup, the only option is modifying the OS.  In the case of GNU/Linux,
you might have a look at using a loopback filesystem as the root
filesystem.  How to make this possible is not in the scope of this
list.  When the kernel supports it, you can use the GRUB 2 `loopback'
command.

But because you are not a developer (as it seems) who is interested in
hacking kernels, you just have to know it is not possible.

--
Marco