App to allow "live boot" of an iso on HDD??

[gcmartin]

This is a tool that will allow you to test any Puppy ISO without burning it to media

This tool is useful in booting the ISO on a real PC or on a Virtual PC. This tool works regardless whether you want to boot a 32bit or a 64bit PUP on some PC; again, real or virtual.

In simple language, you

1. add it to one of your running Puppy PC, then
2. go to ANY other PC on your LAN, and boot it.

You can select/interchange/mix/combine as many Puppy ISOs that you would/could want. There is no other requirements of real or virtual products to use it. It just works!

Any feedback you have, please post it there. The setup instructions was written, months ago, to make it easy for ANYONE. If its not easy or you have suggestions for the manual, please offer it.

Hope this helps

[8-bit]

Maybe this would not work, but how about using something like a net boot of the ISO?
It would work like you would select the ISO from the download site to boot to.
That ISO would get booted into memory without even having to download the ISO.
Possible?

Remember though that one would run the risk of giving an ISO permission to boot on your PC and hopefully not be redirected to a nasty.

[nooby]

wrong place I move this post
It was not as easy as you wrote compared to
just using iso boot.

Setting up a server is not an easy thing. Servers are
the most exploited computer thing on earth. I will not do it!

[greengeek]

Thanks guys, a lot here for me to digest.

It looks like the "mount iso and build frugal folders" is a good option for me to avoid wasting CDs. At this stage I'm sticking with Puppy frugals only, for the sake of simplicity.

And the Vbox method sounds like it will allow a trial of the new iso without rebooting? But at the expense of needing a lot of memory? Most of my machines have only 256 or 512mb, so that sounds problematic but I will try it anyway. Sounds like what I was looking for.

I will have a closer look again after work. cheers

EDIT: I'm still hoping to be able to use an automated method of mounting the iso and copying the necessary contents out of the iso and building the frugal folder and menu.lst entry. More trials to come later.

[linuxbear]

Forgive me if this sounds stupid...

I would like to see the development of an app that allows me to "live boot" from an iso that I have downloaded to my HDD.

Thx

You can set up a USB thumbdrive to boot an ISO if your computer will allow booting from a USB port. For aps to do this, got to

http:www.pendrivelinux.com

If a thumbdrive does not work, try a read/write CD, that worked for me.

[greengeek]

L18L.. Oh yeah, sorry... the machine I will try this on is a Tosh TE2100 2Ghz machine with 512mb, but I have Puppy installed on about 15 other machines aswell, with lesser specs.

Probly will have to stick to CD boots for those other machines.

GCMartin... The netbooting sounds interesting, although I don't yet share my machines across the network. I like to keep everything separate. Do you think it would be possible to boot a machine from itself using this sort of method? ie: use the lo port (127.x.x.x) to get the PXE data from itself (192.168.x.x), then boot to that iso?

Sorry if this reveals my ignorance - In my mind everything is possible until reality steps in and proves the opposite.

[greengeek]

thanks linuxbear. Unfortunately I'm stuck with machines that mostly don't support boot from USB.

Although maybe one method might be to keep a single Puppy CD in the drive as a boot device, and load different isos to the usb stick ready for the CD boot to find? Have you tried anything like that? Maybe it is possible to extract a file from the iso (maybe an sfs?) and have that on the stick.

Think I need to do some separate research about that.

[gcmartin]

... Do you think it would be possible to boot a machine from itself using this sort of method? ie: use the lo port (127.x.x.x) to get the PXE data from itself (192.168.x.x), then boot to that iso? ... .

Not an ignorant question. Without getting too detailed, this is only possible when using your PC as a VM host and having a VM client which is set up to PXE (find a place to boot from). Then, the VM client would boot your ISO and you would have both your main PC (host) running and you client (ISO0 running at the same time. This presents itself as if there were 2 independent PCs. For a lengthier discussion PM me and I'll walk you thru an simple discussion if this is what you want to do.

Setting up a server is not an easy thing. Servers are the most exploited computer thing on earth. I will not do it!

This outburst is a little disturbing. Every techie knows that if one machine shares something with another machine, that is a "server". And the ability to share something is NOT a difficulty or something we should run away from.

I think you are trying to, either, confuse/discourage unnecessarily with that kind of comment..

Nooby, if for some reason you were unable to get a PC to boot on your home network, you, too, can PM me and I, personally, will walk you thru how the manual explains to do this. Its very easy if your PCs are on your LAN connected to your router. Its really very easy and I do mean EASY ! (Nooby, if its a language thing that confusing you, I'm sure between you and I we can create a translation in your language.)

Hope this helps

[L18L]

L18L.. Oh yeah, sorry... the machine I will try this on is a Tosh TE2100 2Ghz machine with 512mb, but I have Puppy installed on about 15 other machines aswell, with lesser specs.
...

I am afraid virtualbox will need more RAM

But give grub a try.

I have a small (16M is more than enough) bootable partion containing grub on every device (1 hardisk, several USB sticks, no CD).

Thus you could try frugal installs without burning a CD (frugal is better than full, if possible=enough RAM)

Maybe grub4dos is better than just grub

Hope this helps

[greengeek]

Maybe this would not work, but how about using something like a net boot of the ISO?
It would work like you would select the ISO from the download site to boot to.
That ISO would get booted into memory without even having to download the ISO.
Possible?

Interesting idea. So you mean basically a PXE load across the internet? I am too new to this to know if such a thing might work, but it raises the question about how much data of that iso has to cross the network to enable the boot. ie: the whole 100+ mb or just a fraction of it?

I need to get PXE going on my home network first, to help me overcome the ignorance factor.
cheers

[greengeek]

I have a small (16M is more than enough) bootable partion containing grub on every device (1 hardisk, several USB sticks, no CD).

Thus you could try frugal installs without burning a CD

So do you mean that your boot partition is just big enough for grub, and that the remainder of the frugal files live on the usb sticks? So you just use the hard drive as a boot device only? Or did you mean that each usb stick also has grub on it, requiring the PC to support boot_from_usb?
thx

[L18L]

I have a small (16M is more than enough) bootable partion containing grub on every device (1 hardisk, several USB sticks, no CD).

Thus you could try frugal installs without burning a CD

So do you mean that your boot partition is just big enough for grub, and that the remainder of the frugal files live on the usb sticks? So you just use the hard drive as a boot device only? Or did you mean that each usb stick also has grub on it, requiring the PC to support boot_from_usb?
thx

In a boot partition there is grub and a complete tiny distribution (not in use but works). I have used this on my box without harddisk or CD about one year. Yes, boot from USB is required.
Late I have installed a SSD (behaves like a harddisk but faster).
And there too grub in boot partition. Several puppies all frugal in their own directory.

Your Computer has USB but does not boot from it.
With grub in a bootable partition (or any bootloader) of your harddisk you can boot different operating system.
Not the iso directly, but I hope you find elsewhere howto copy the relevant files from inside the iso into the appropriate location.

First step would be:
Use gparted to create an extra boot partition and maybe a swap partition after having resized the existing partition. You can do this from a puppy running from CD.

Second step
Installation of grub. Should be included in Puppy Universal Installer.

To have a partition of its own for grub is not absolutely required but convenient.

I do not have experience using grub4dos, but I assume it is easier to install. (nooby knows how to do it)

Good luck

[nooby]

I do not have experience using grub4dos, but I assume it is easier to install. (nooby knows how to do it)

Nope I would not count on that at all.
What I do try to learn but is a slow learner is to get Linux distros
that are not supposed to work on NTFS formatted drives to work
or at least to load to desktop so one can see how them are set up
with menu and how one find things and personal settings and what
software that is included and how it looks and behaves.

Sadly due to how hardware and software interact very often one
can not save to the partition that one boot from. Ubuntu due to some
pure luck makes it possible to save to NTFS. I don't trust them support
that and most likely them will change code so it will not be possible
after next security update.

But that is my hobby. see my signature.

1. So it is a trade off. Us Qemu or Vbox or Xen or the new one
that I've forgot name for to test drive things easily?

2. Try my more difficult approach to boot them using tricks
and that way get partial use of many distros but not doing full installs
first but only after you have used them in frugal install for a long time.

3. Try to get hold of an old computer that you can format without
losing anything. or accept to lose the recover partitions when you
resize a new computer.

Why am I fanatic? Because Sony Ericson and other Smartphone makers
seems to have decided that if 95% of all their customers only use Ms
then that is the OS them make use of to upgrade their Software.
So I always try to dual boot with the hated MS OS and I hate it too.

[sickgut]

grub4dos and grub2 can both boot isos directly, IF the iso is specially "prepared" to allow that functions. How to prepare the iso to do that? no one knows lol.

cant do it with debian but you can with some ubuntus etc

[nooby]

grub4dos and grub2 can both boot isos directly, IF the iso is specially "prepared" to allow that functions. How to prepare the iso to do that? no one knows lol.

cant do it with debian but you can with some ubuntus etc

Nope I trust it is not something I did at all. It is the Ubuntu Developers
that forgot to put an x in a box them always have since many years
and them very proud of doing it too and very adamant in keeping it
ideologically supported with fancy rhetoric in the Ubuntu forums.

then suddenly them forgot to tick that box and now almost all Ubuntu
can be used in a way them had not anticipated nor expected and them
certainly don't want to be used that way.

I would thank D4P for giving me the first part of teh solution but
his system on his home page is too elaborate for me to follow.

One need to do partitions and I don't want to do such.

[greengeek]

Ok, so far I have mostly been concentrating on GCMartins suggested method of trialling different isos by booting across a LAN (No more wasted CDs!).

More to follow on the other methods later.

The LAN method is this: The puppy PC that contains all of my downloaded iso files is set up as a "Boot file source" or "PXE server" and is available to provide the boot files to any other PC that is set up to "boot from LAN" rather than booting from CD, HDD or USB etc.

If you wanted to you could boot a whole bunch of LAN PCs from the one machine. Don't even need a hard drive or operating system in those other machines.

I was amazed how simple this was to set up. (Thanks GCMartin for the excellent assistance)

Really all it takes is ten minutes to get it running. So easy. And you don't need to have any networking or file sharing already set up at all. Nothing.

I just tried to attach a document detailing the process but apparently neither pdf nor abw attachments are permitted. Hmmm... how best to post this??

[greengeek]

I will just try pasting the text.... (sorry, this doesn't look very elegant..)

Booting a PC via your LAN - Made Simple:

Premise: This is a simplified explanation for setting up a Puppy PC as a “bootfile source

[Flash]

Greengeek, on the subject of not making coasters to try out Puppy, I've been using CD-RW and DVD-RW for years. Puppy seems to like them just fine. I burn Puppy to them using Burniso2cd.

[greengeek]

I've been using CD-RW and DVD-RW for years. Puppy seems to like them just fine. I burn Puppy to them using Burniso2cd.

Hadn't thought of that... when I first tried using CDRW (years ago) I had so many problems and lost so much data that I never went back to them. Perhaps the technology has improved a bit?

I'll see if I still have one lying around and give it a go.

[greengeek]

wrong place I move this post
It was not as easy as you wrote compared to
just using iso boot.

Setting up a server is not an easy thing. Servers are
the most exploited computer thing on earth. I will not do it!

Nooby - I decided to try all of the methods people are suggesting here and I just wanted to let you know that setting up the "server" to share iso files turned out to be so easy that it takes only a few minutes.

It is really handy for me because it means I can even try different puppy isos on machines that don't have a CD drive or can't boot from USB.

It also means I can get my other family members to trial puppy without even getting out of their chair, and without them having to load a CD or USB stick. They can just reboot and select "boot by LAN" and give it a try.

Simple, simple, simple. Just one more bit of fun.