ISO boot from FAT/NTFS/USB (GRUB.exe, grldr from boot.ini)

[ruymbeke]

hello,
I'm another newbie to this whole boot from an .ISO image thing.. but it sounds like a cool concept
I was just wondering if this boot from .iso method only applies to knoppix, or does it work for any bootable cd image?
I would like to boot my windows xp cd, or other linux distro cds, etc. Is this possible ??
Sorry i didn't read through all 46 pages of this thread yet, but i kinda skimmed through the first few and last but they all talk about knoppix iso images it seems..
thanks

That would be great !
But I had to customize the Knoppix boot ramdisk quite a bit to get it to work (double loop back).
So technically it can be done, practically it requires quite a lot of customization which is very distro specific (boot script).
But the grub boot loader (grldr) started from the boot.ini of XP as an example can be a good starting point to boot other OSes.
You "just" need the boot process of the OS to be able to handle the iso loopback required to boot from it.
AFAIK, Kanotix and some other Knoppix derivatives already incude the required changes.
It is not that complicated if you are used to play with boot scripts and boot tools but is quite a pain if you have never done it.
Hope this helps,
Gilles

[tribunal]

"playing" with boot scripts? LOL... that is already starting to sound complicated.

But please enlighten me on this topic as it's really interesting. Why do we have to rely on boot.ini or config.sys or any boot loader of the previous OS that was installed? I mean, when the BIOS boots off the cd, it does not rely on the previous OS or its boot loader at all.. it just simply boots the cd. So isn't it possible to create an emulator-like file that simulates the boot process the way that the BIOS does?

For example, when i first heard of PXE, the idea of booting an OS off a network, I was so impressed by it... I immediately wanted to try to see how it works. But spending several hours, i finally understood my network card is too old and doesn't support pxe. Then after spending several days, I finally found a site where it gives me a boot image that emulates my network card so it can act as if it has PXE support, which finally made me see the beauty of network booting.

I know these two are completely different scenarios, but my point is, is it not possible to just emulate that part where the bios initiates the booting and then hand over control to the cd image? Am i making any sense ?

[ruymbeke]

"playing" with boot scripts? LOL... that is already starting to sound complicated.

But please enlighten me on this topic as it's really interesting. Why do we have to rely on boot.ini or config.sys or any boot loader of the previous OS that was installed? I mean, when the BIOS boots off the cd, it does not rely on the previous OS or its boot loader at all.. it just simply boots the cd. So isn't it possible to create an emulator-like file that simulates the boot process the way that the BIOS does?

An an emulator-like capable to boot and read data off a hdd and virtualize the memory so it doesn't appear
to the OS running under it, is so called virtualization software, cf qemu (free), vmware (the best) or virtualpc (pouah).

For example, when i first heard of PXE, the idea of booting an OS off a network, I was so impressed by it... I immediately wanted to try to see how it works. But spending several hours, i finally understood my network card is too old and doesn't support pxe. Then after spending several days, I finally found a site where it gives me a boot image that emulates my network card so it can act as if it has PXE support, which finally made me see the beauty of network booting.

I have played with this quite a bit as well.
You are probably referring to http://rom-o-matic.net/ and etherboot.
This is just a way to download from the network a bootloader as pxeboot or grub (with network support)
in order to load the kernel and boot ramdisk (similar to isolinux on cd/dvd to emulate a boot floppy)
But PXE doesn't emulate anything. It is just a network hack to load the real network bootloader.

I know these two are completely different scenarios, but my point is, is it not possible to just emulate that part where the bios initiates the booting and then hand over control to the cd image? Am i making any sense ?

You may want to try the "free" vmplayer from vmware and my Knoppix virtual machine:
http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtop...=107353#107353

[tribunal]

An an emulator-like capable to boot and read data off a hdd and virtualize the memory so it doesn't appear
to the OS running under it, is so called virtualization software, cf qemu (free), vmware (the best) or virtualpc (pouah).

sorry I think I didn't explain the situation correctly. what i meant was, doing the emulation *outside* an operating system. i.e a real genuine boot similar to when you start up your pc. vmware, virtualpc, etc does all the emulation inside another OS which isn't what i had in mind

You are probably referring to http://rom-o-matic.net/ and etherboot.

yep, thats the one. I was just amazed by it as i had never seen anything like it before. i guess for a newbie like me, this is all awe-inspiring.

You may want to try the "free" vmplayer from vmware and my Knoppix virtual machine:
http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtop...=107353#107353

Although my intention was not use virtualization software, in the end it looks like this is what it comes down to. I'll check it out.

I've searched all over the net hoping someone might've done what you guys did in this thread, only instead of customizing to boot just one particular kind of ISO, boot any ISO image file, but it looks like it may be much harder than i think.


thanks for your suggestions

[kirol]

Hi Gilles,

I am trying your VM with VMWARE Player 1.0.1 and the 5.0.1 Knoppix CD ISO image.
Seems to work fine, but X runs in a virtual 2000x1700 resolution; how can i alter that?
Also how can I pass command-line boot options (e.g. to select lang)

TIA,

--kirol

[ruymbeke]

Hi Gilles,
I am trying your VM with VMWARE Player 1.0.1 and the 5.0.1 Knoppix CD ISO image.
Seems to work fine, but X runs in a virtual 2000x1700 resolution; how can i alter that?
Also how can I pass command-line boot options (e.g. to select lang)
TIA,
--kirol

Hi Kirol,
As I wrote in my previous post ( http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtop...=107353#107353 )
You should enable the "Autofit guest" options in the view menu
and then resize/shrink the vmware window or use the full screen mode.
The knoppix screen size will automatically resize to the vmware window.

In order to change the kernel boot cheatcodes you will need to edit the grub config file
located in /media/hda1/boot/grub/menu.lst after granting write permission to hda1.

Please let me know how this works for you.
Best Regards,
Gilles

[kirol]

Thanks for the prompt reply. I can't see any "view menu". Perhaps that's because my player version is outdated (build 19317). But that's not too bad as I've discovered that the resolution gets dynamically adjusted if I switch to full-screen mode. The KDE "screen resize" applet also works, and offers an absurdly long list of virtual resolutions (who'd want to use 300x700 for example?).

Editing the "menu.lst" file also worked, which puzzles me as I thought it lived in your read-only images... I see hda1 seems to offer 500MB, although there is no such big file in the VM startup directory; is this allocated on demand by VMWARE? and then from virtual memory or permanent disk? So many questions

Anyway this is a really really nice way of having the best of both worlds. I've colinux working which is an interesting fully OSS solution, but have to admit this is much easier to setup. Thanks again for your wonderful additions to KNOPPIX.

[ruymbeke]

Thanks for the prompt reply. I can't see any "view menu". Perhaps that's because my player version is outdated (build 19317). But that's not too bad as I've discovered that the resolution gets dynamically adjusted if I switch to full-screen mode. The KDE "screen resize" applet also works, and offers an absurdly long list of virtual resolutions (who'd want to use 300x700 for example?).

You are correct.
The view menu only exists in the worksation but it looks like that this already the default mode of the player.
So the easiest way I found with the vmlayer is to first switch to full screen mode, then get back to window mode
and then finally shrink the window to match your needs. So you won't need to use the scroll bars to painfully
reach the icon to change the screen resolution among all these choices. Actually I could improve that
by removing some of these totally useless resolution. I will keep that for my ToDo list on the next Knoppix release.

Editing the "menu.lst" file also worked, which puzzles me as I thought it lived in your read-only images... I see hda1 seems to offer 500MB, although there is no such big file in the VM startup directory; is this allocated on demand by VMWARE? and then from virtual memory or permanent disk? So many questions

You are correct again. I found out that vmware propose the option to only use disk space
for the guest hdd blocs which have already been allocated and have real data written in them.
So as you will find out , the more you use the hda1 virtual disk, the larger the vmk501.vmdk file will grow.
Reason for me to use ghost as the last step to shrink the vmdk file and only have a 11MB vm once zipped.

Anyway this is a really really nice way of having the best of both worlds. I've colinux working which is an interesting fully OSS solution, but have to admit this is much easier to setup. Thanks again for your wonderful additions to KNOPPIX.

My pleasure. Thank you for your feedback !
Gilles

[Mordecai]

Hi.

I downed johnrw zip and put the files on C: and the 2 big files from 501 DVD in the Knoppix folder.

So when I try to boot it stops with:-

"Check if (0x80) is CD ...........no"

I guess I am missing something?

[Mordecai]

Can please explain how to use the VMWare player with the 2 big files from the DVD as I have not got the .iso CD.

Many thanks.


Edit

OK forget this question I figured out I had to make an iso----duh!