Grub2 ISO Boot Options

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Booting ISOs from Grub2

This page is meant simply to hold information on configuring Grub2 to boot various ISOs using the loopback option. I use this primarily for a multiboot USB key with all sorts of useful boot disks on it. Instructions on installing Grub2 on a USB disk can be found elsewhere.

Do you have information you’d like to contribute? Send it to multipass[at]stealinurmegahurtz[dot]com, if the tip checks out, I’ll post it and give you credit (if you want it).

Note, that all configurations will assume that grub is installed to /boot/grub and all disk images are in /boot/iso

These first couple of ISOs come from Panticz.de MultiBoot script. The Ubuntu configuration should work with any Ubuntu live CD variation.

menuentry "Ubuntu Live 9.04 i386" {
 loopback loop /boot/iso/ubuntu-9.04-desktop-i386.iso
 linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/boot/iso/ubuntu-9.04-desktop-i386.iso --
 initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.gz
}

menuentry "Grml small 2009.05" {
  loopback loop /boot/iso/grml-small_2009.05.iso
  linux (loop)/boot/grmlsmall/linux26 findiso=/boot/iso/grml-small_2009.05.iso boot=live quiet vga=791 noeject noprompt
  initrd (loop)/boot/grmlsmall/initrd.gz
}

It seems that the SystemRescueCD has been updated to work with this now. Thanks for the tip Jan!

menuentry “SystemRescueCD 1.3.3 32bit” {
 loopback loop /boot/iso/systemrescuecd-x86-1.3.3.iso
 linux (loop)/isolinux/rescuecd isoloop=/boot/iso/systemrescuecd-x86-1.3.3.iso rdinit=/linuxrc2
 initrd (loop)/isolinux/initram.igz
 }

Link It!