# Is there a way to boot from an ISO selected at boot time?



## SoiCowboy (Jan 25, 2009)

Can anybody tell me of and method or product which allows you to navigate to an ISO (stored on a hard drive partition) at boot time and boot from it? 

I test new linux distros regularly, and burning a CD every time seems like an unnecessary step. Most of the CDs end up getting get thrown out, apart from the few that I want to keep. I would much rather just boot from the ISO if it's possible.

I gather that this can be done by modifying grub's menu.lst, or by using the grub command line. Ideally though, I'd rather find a somethin (probably a bootable CD) that just lets me navigate to an ISO and boot it.

I also have a friend with a disability which limits his mobility. He also likes to try out Linux distros, and can easily download ISO images, but is NOT able to insert a CD into the drive. Such a product would be very useful to him.

Thanks in advance.

SoiCowboy


----------



## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

No. (I should qualify. No, there is no method worth the trouble.)

But you can boot an iso in a virtual machine, like VirtualBox. I do that all the time in VMWare to test bootable CD's without burning them. I have vm's for Ubuntu, XP, and iso boot. You can just specify the iso instead of the drive to boot from. You don't even need to shut down the machine.

Qemu can boot some iso's, too, but may not be for beginners in the virtual world.


----------



## SoiCowboy (Jan 25, 2009)

Absolutely. I do it with VMs all the time. It makes me think how convenient it would be to boot my host system the same way.


----------



## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

SoiCowboy said:


> Absolutely. I do it with VMs all the time. It makes me think how convenient it would be to boot my host system the same way.


Just hold on. SSD's are here and will be the norm soon. Then "click" and there's your desktop. With HP's new memristors (the missing circuit element that was predicted to exist decades ago made flesh), there won't be any more delays for booting, nor power needed for memory retention.


----------



## SoiCowboy (Jan 25, 2009)

Thanks for the response, btw. You are right that a VM is the obvious way to test OSes. I just think that this type of tool would be useful and certainly something I would use regularly. Maybe I should just try to make it myself.


----------



## SoiCowboy (Jan 25, 2009)

I won't have the cash, having spent it on a copy of Duke Nukem Forever.


----------



## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

No cash needed for VirtualBox and they came out with a new version this month. Sun bought them out, so I always grab the latest, suspecting that "free" may be only momentary.

Just install it and boot your iso.

It's nice to try our OS's without partitioning. And by the way, Ubuntu can be installed in Windows and run from a virtual drive, yet have its own boot from the startup boot screen, with no partitioning, with WUBI. If you want to remove it, boot Windows, go to Add/Remove, delete the virtual drive, and you're back where you started with no dangerous partitioning needed. You'll find some very ingenious solutions to most problems out there.


----------



## SoiCowboy (Jan 25, 2009)

I already have virtualbox. It's great, but virtual machines have many limitations. My question is in regards to how I can boot a real (ie. *non-virtual*) PC from an ISO stored on the hard disk. 

I meant I won't have the cash for the holy SSD you were talking about, because I expect I will have spent my money on Duke Nukem Forever by the time it is available at a realistic price.


----------



## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

You'd need an OS that could run from a read-only environment, of course, and that contained all the drivers the machine needed. I really see no point in booting from an iso, but maybe you do. If you are booting from the hard drive anyway, you may as well save the step of making the iso at all and just boot from the files that it would contain.

But there are some tips and directions here and here if you want to pursue this. Of course, no iso can actually be booted directly. You need to boot to something else just to meet your "choosing" requirement.

What "limitations" of virtual machines are you referring to? They work in nearly every way as a real OS would, with the exception that the hardware is not a real machine's.


----------



## Squashman (Apr 4, 2003)

What about just booting from a USB stick?

I highly doubt it would be possible to do what you want to do.


----------



## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

Squashman said:


> What about just booting from a USB stick?
> 
> I highly doubt it would be possible to do what you want to do.


That's a very good, alternative suggestion. Frankly, I just don't see the point in trying to boot from an iso when there are so many alternatives. But booting from a USB stick is a very good idea. Once made bootable, the iso can be transferred to it easily and no CD's "wasted" (if that is the point of this exercise), though I would think that eventually an iso would need to be burned to CD, anyway, to be of any use (after testing).

The newest versions of GRUB4DOS do seem to support iso boots under some circumstances.


----------



## TheOutcaste (Aug 8, 2007)

You might consider using a CD-RW/DVD-RW. They cost a little more, but can be erased and used over roughly 1,000 times or more.


----------

