Here’s An Easier Way To Boot ISO Image From Your Hard Drive

This guide will shown you two method how to boot an ISO image file that stored in your hard drive. Booting an ISO on your hard drive is useful for testing new versions of Linux ISO file without using up a CD/DVD or USB Stick.On this case I will boot Ubuntu 13.04 iso directly from hard disk via the Grub2 boot menu.

There are two methods to boot Ubuntu ISO image from hard drive. Two methods are provided below, Method 1: using the grml-rescueboot  to automatically create the GRUB menuentry and Method 2: Manually editing the GRUB 2 configuration files.

Method 1 : Boot ISO Image using grml-rescueboot

grml-rescueboot is a package provides a script for update-grub which looks for  Grml ISO images in /boot/grml and automatically adds an entry  for each image. The purpose is to use one of those images to  boot a Grml rescue system without using a CD/DVD or USB stick.

Installing grml-rescueboot in ubuntu 13.04:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install grml-rescueboot

Then copy the ISO image to /boot/grml/

sudo cp -v ~/ISOFILE/ubuntu-13.04-desktop-i386.iso /boot/grml/

Update Grub 2 with the following command:

sudo update-grub

Reboot your Ubuntu PC/Laptop, and you will a new option in your booting list. Now, You can Try or install Ubuntu from your hard disk.

Method 2: Manually editing the GRUB Configuration files

Create a directory named iso in your root folder using this command:

sudo mkdir /isoimage

Now copy ubuntu 13.04 iso file (ubuntu-13.04-desktop-i386.iso) to directory /isoimage :

sudo cp -v ~/ISOFILE/ubuntu-13.04-desktop-i386.iso /isoimage

Edit /boot/grub/grub.cfg file with following command:

sudo nano /etc/grub.d/40_custom

add these lines to Custom GRUB Configuration file (/etc/grub.d/40_custom):

menuentry "Ubuntu 13.04 Live" {
 set root=(hd0,1)
 loopback loop /isoimage/ubuntu-13.04-desktop-i386.iso
 linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/isoimage/ubuntu-13.04-desktop-i386.iso noprompt noeject
 initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz
}

Save your file and exit. Then reboot ubuntu and hold down the Shift key to bring up the Grub boot menu. Select Ubuntu 13.04 Live to boot ubuntu 13.04 iso image from hard drive