HD Install :: Boot from ISO file on HDD?

I don't see the point in booting of an .iso file ?

Well, maybe if you want to boot several different OS's would it be worth to bother working a way out to do such a thing.

Why not just copy the contents of the image to a partition and boot that ?

Maybe have a look at this thread

Booting from HD using grub

There is a reason why the boot from iso command exists.

You cannot mount a C:\KNOPPIX\KNOPPIX cloop filesystem if your C:\ drive is formatted with NTFS.

So it is impossible to do a poormans or fromhd install from an NTFS partition.

HOWEVER, it is possible to mount a /KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX filesystem that is contained inside an ISO file that is sitting inside a C:\knoppix.iso NTFS partition.

So this gives the Win NT / 2000 / XP / 2003 user the ability to run KNOPPIX or DSL from the hard drive without reformatting or repartitioning. The performance is much faster than with a straight livecd from a CDROM drive arrangement.

The only requirement is that your initial bootup process requires the presense of the livecd.

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Also, the 'bootfrom' option needs the partition, not the path.
i.e. - not " dsl bootfrom=/home/dsl/iso.iso " , but
" dsl bootfrom=/dev/hda1/iso.iso "

I have to do that all the time with Knoppix, so I can use the one cdrom drive to burn a copy of the .iso.
I just use a knoppix cd to get booted, and "knoppix bootfrom=/dev/hdb1/thatknoppix.iso
and I am up and running. It is a little slower than running off of the cdrom, but I have no choice. Then I remove the boot cd, and put my blank cd in the drive, and burn the .iso to it. So, I can run off the .iso, and burn a copy of that same .iso, too. Can't do "toram" since the .iso is 670MB, but can do that with DSL, since it is so small. When I boot from the .iso on the hard drive, then all of the memory is available for the CD burning. I have had crashes when trying to burn a cd using 1GB ram if I "toram" with the Knoppix .iso. Only about 150 MB left over, so that is not enough for K3B, for instance.
I would suppose that if a CDROM drive, such as a backpack were temporarily installed, then a DSL .iso could be copied to a Windows hard drive partition.
(Windows 98), then a boot floppy could be used to get going, running off of the .iso on the hard drive. Could leave it up all day...
After the Backpack CDROM drive is disconnected, you have a DSL computer
that has no cdrom drive, and only perhaps a minimal Windows 98 installation. It is possible to use MSDOS only, and use the msdos interlnk/intersvr to copy the .iso to the machines hard drive. I have done it, takes a while, hours in fact.
Another way to get the .iso on the drive is to physically install the drive as a slave on a working DSL machine, with an .iso on the master drive, and use a commercial drive copy program (PowerQuest's Drive Copy) to clone the drive onto the slave, then remove the slave and install it in your machine. I have had to do that with difficult installs such as Debian and SuSE. One can resize the partition to fit the new drive, and you are good to go.

I did the following:
1.booted knoppix made a partition /dev/hdb1 with fdisk and created a filesystem mke2fs -cj /dev/hdb1
2. coppyed the dsl.iso there
3. rebooted typed in boot: knoppix bootfrom=/dev/hdb1/dsl.iso

and it didn't work

So I asked google and this seems to be a problem:

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NOTE: bootfrom needs access to a running Knoppix-System with the same Kernel as the Bootkernel, before it is able to mount the partition / ISO-Image.

I haven't read the whole post so this might be allready mentioned.

original here.