Directly booting an ISO file

It is technically possible to boot an .iso file directly, without flashing it to a disk or device.

Using a virtual machine

The Qemu page shows how an ISO image and .apkovl customizations are booted with a virtual machine.

Using an installed Bootloader

grub-imageboot

In addition to standard partitions or drives, the Debian package grub-imageboot allows booting .iso files placed in the /boot/images directory.

Manual Grub menu entry

No solution found yet.

I've given up. Couldn't make the intended setup work with my meager Linux knowledge. I did find a page here at the wiki where under the heading 'Install Alpine cd-rom image on hard disk' a somewhat related solution is provided, but it involves extracting the distro files from the iso, something that unetbootin does in a rather more easy and straightforward way -- at least, that's what I used to get Alpine to boot from a USB pendrive (plenty of recipes for that around). However, I still believe a simple 'boot from iso' procedure could do wonders for Alpine, so I'm leaving this here for future reference. Should anyone disagree, do feel free to delete. Pnin 05:43, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Current system is a 2.8 Prescott Pentium IV with 2MB RAM, booting from a 1GB CF plugged into the IDE interface, with an attached 500GB SATA HDD for data. When I tried to install Alpine from the LiveCD to this card, which is listed as a hard drive by the BIOS, it complained of insufficient space. Fair enough. Next I tried to follow this recipe to boot from Alpine 2.1.4 iso. At the end you find this tip:

Adding an Unlisted ISO: To try ISO Files that are not yet listed, use the existing menu entry examples in /boot/grub/grub.cfg and append any options normally found in the distribution's syslinux.cfg file on the "append" line to the "linux" line of the menu entry.

So I downloaded the latest Alpine iso via wget and modified the relevant grub.cfg lines to:

linux (loop)/boot/grsec initrd=/boot/grsec.gz iso-scan/filename=/alpine214.iso alpine_dev=usbdisk:vfat modules=loop,cramfs,sd-mod,usb-storage quiet
initrd (loop)/boot/grsec.gz

All I got when I tried to boot this was the following error:

Alpine Init 2.1.2
/init: eval: line 1: syntax error: unexpected "("
kernel panic - not syncing: attempted to kill init!
Pid: 1, comm: init Not tainted 2.6.35.10-grsec #1-Alpine
[...]

I must say all went well with the Linux Mint 10.10 and the TinyCore isos, into which I'm able to boot with no issues. Anyone care to advise?

Pnin

---

Hi, that "linux (loop)/boot/...." thing looks funny to me.

According to: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2

Could you try:

set root=(loop0)
linux /boot/grsec initrd=/boot/grsec.gz iso-scan/filename=/alpine214.iso alpine_dev=usbdisk:vfat modules=loop,cramfs,sd-mod,usb-storage quiet
initrd /boot/grsec.gz

Nangel 13:49, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

---

Hi & thanks, Nangel.

Tried that and got this error:

error: no such disk.
error: you need to load the kernel first.
press any key to continue...

Pressing any key returns to the grub menu. Maybe the full grub.cfg entry should be reported here:

menuentry "Alpine Linux" {
loopback loop /alpine214.iso
linux (loop)/boot/grsec initrd=/boot/grsec.gz iso-scan/filename=/alpine214.iso alpine_dev=usbdisk:vfat modules=loop,cramfs,sd-mod,usb-storage quiet
initrd (loop)/boot/grsec.gz
}

It should also be noted that the LiveCD used to perform the recipe was "Linux Mint 9 LXDE", which caused Grub 1.98-1ubuntu5-1mint2 to be installed, not Grub2. And that (loop) part is present in every other successful menu entry.

[EDIT: Just to add that IMHO coupled with the Alpine Local Backup Utility (lbu), booting from iso would be a killer feature for Alpine, making systems really easy to troubleshoot (delete local backup) and upgrade (replace iso).]

Pnin 14:34, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Suppose alpine-extended-3.14.0-x86_64.iso is stored in directory boot in partition 1 on disk. GRUB2 can be caused to load kernel and initramfs by entering:

grub> loopback lb /boot/alpine-extended-3.14.0-x86_64.iso
grub> linux  (lb)/boot/vmlinuz-lts
grub> initrd (lb)/boot/initramfs-lts
grub> boot

Of course a menue entry for GRUB2 can be created with these statements.

Initialising Alpine will then be aborted with messages:

Mounting boot media: failed
initramfs emergency recovery shell launched. Type 'exit' to continue boot

To mount the filesystem where alpine-extended-3.14.0-x86_64.iso is stored, enter:

# mount /dev/sda1 /media/sda1

To mount the ISO image, enter:

# mount -o loop -t iso9660 /media/sda1/boot/alpine-extended-3.14.0-x86_64.iso /media/cdrom

Continue initialisation with:

# exit

At last these messages will be displayed:

/lib/rc/sh/openrc-run.sh: eval: line 1: syntax error: unexpected "("
* ERROR: firstboot failed to start

but login root works and Alpine can be configured using

# alpine-setup

syslinux

No solution found yet.