Feature Request Explained: Boot from ISO

[johnnyhay]

Can't you just install vmware and boot from the iso?
Or boot in to a terminal and mount it from there?
Until then,

Code: Select all

mount -o  loop-t iso9660 /the/source/image.iso /mount/point

[pulltionize]

lxnay

I just can say that's not a maintainable feature. It's not even so useful in the end me thinks...

Like I wrote in request. Sabayon linux has similiar boot option "toram" . How is this useful? I see bootfromiso an upgrade of "toram" and please read weak points etc in my request, I mention this.





johnnyhay

Or boot in to a terminal and mount it from there?

Like I wrote clearly in the request, that this bootoption could be EASILY implemented. Is that the option is as simple as this.. its just a script for mounting the partition which the iso is placed, and its mounting the iso with loop command. Simple as that! Then it boots from it as if its a cdrom.. by just looking att knoppix source, it might be relatively easy. And with this of course.. we might even add another feature like knoppix has, which lets you save the current session. And thus loading session when booting into livecd. For those who always use live cd, this is a great feature.

[Ron.W]

Hello.

I'd like to second this request, since I have experienced this feature as a very useful one. This technique allows to create a testing environment for users who come from other OS and would like to find out whether their equipment is supported up to their expectationes and would like to elongate this test-phase beyond the potentials the DVD grants.

I'll explain this in detail for a typical hitherto Windows-user:

In the first step, he can install the Wingrub-Software on his native Windows-environment. After this he has a bootloader present on his System and he'll be able to customise his menu.lst to boot to Sabayonlinux.
The second step would be, to copy the untouched iso-file to his hdd, without the need of repartitioning and reformatting his drives for the first transitory period. He can leave it with NTFS (unlimited) or FAT (up to 4GB-Image) as well.

There is no need to burn DVD at all, if he performs a third step: He has to copy two files into any Dirctory of one of his hard-drives and point in his menu.lst to it: kernel and initrd. This can be done by mounting the image via virtual DVD-drives in Windows-environment temporarily, not exactly that convenient as in linux (mount...), but without any problems.

Finally the unionfs allows to store changes quasi to the DVD-image (not really, the changes are stored in an aditional image-file on his hard-drive, which the user can create easily using dd and mkfs.ext3) But unionfs is allready present in Sabyone.

The described method allows to extend the experiments with the "new" OS for our ingenuous example-windows-user. He will benefit from the striking acceleration compared to the Life-System from DVD. It boots and works literly as fast as the installed, without the delay loading menus and programs from DVD.
You can do everything just as Sabayon were really installed allready, without one exception: Until now, there is no way to update the kernel on a Ultra-poor-man's install, as they call this method on Kanotix...

The main thing is: you can remove the aditional System from the PC in the twinkling of an eye, without leaving any traces. Moreover it'll pitch Sabayone to the ordinary Windows-user, since he can experience the benefits without the need of reconfiguring everything in Sabayone after next boot again. He can proceed his tryout on next day exactly in the state he has left it the day before.

I have experienced the benefits of this cheatcode on a laptop myself, since it was not mine, and I was not allowd to repartition and reformat it. But I wanted to use linux on it. So I was struck to Knoppix or Kanotix, since they have both implemented this cheatcode allready. I can tell you: It works great, and it would be a awesome, if also Saybayone-Linux could be mounted from the iso directly instead of burnt dvd.

I don't think it is a big deal, since the changes needed in code are well-documented: http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/User:Ml#miniroot_changes
Looking into the diffs it seems to be a question of some lines in the general startup-script only...

Original, without "fromiso": http://matthieu.lucotte.free.fr/myknopp ... ig/linuxrc
New, with cheatcode: http://matthieu.lucotte.free.fr/myknopp ... ix/linuxrc
Diffs: http://matthieu.lucotte.free.fr/myknopp ... nuxrc.diff


Greetings
Ron



P.S.: Great, I just tried Sabayone-linux for the first time, and it speaks for itself. You've done a good job If the "fromiso"-cheatcode could be added on occassion, I'd be glad to use it on that laptop, since the complete hardware works right out of the box. The breyl-surface running on nvidia-card is pure pleasure.

[whilo]

O.k. that sounds really awsome and would be great to get people testing linux (Sabayon) without a big effort (5 min installation...).

Finally the unionfs allows to store changes quasi to the DVD-image (not really, the changes are stored in an aditional image-file on his hard-drive, which the user can create easily using dd and mkfs.ext3) But unionfs is allready present in Sabyone.

That is really great. As it seems to me you can only do that with vfat at the moment, since full ntfs write support is not yet implemented in the kernel (maybe 2.6.20?). You can use the ntfs3g driver though...
May one can change some hardware issues/boot tasks that way or is the overlay only working for the home directory?

I hope you add that feature for 3.3!

Cheers,
whilo

[lxnay]

Using hal-0.5.8.1 from our overlay, you'll have full out-of-the-box read/write NTFS support trough ntfs-fuse. JFYI