[SOLVED] Fedora 15 Livecd ISO boot from harddisk..help needed

[deepclutch]

Hi,
I am trying to boot Fedora 15 livecd iso in a seperate ext4 partition using grub2 menu entries as below but it fails.

menuentry "Fedora 15 Live" {
 insmod ext2
 set root=(hd0,msdos2)
 loopback loop (hd0,msdos2)/Fedora-15-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso
 linux (loop)/isolinux/vmlinuz0 boot=isolinux root=CDLABEL=Fedora-15-x86_64-Live-Desktop.is rootfstype=auto ro quiet liveimg  noeject noprompt --
 initrd (loop)/isolinux/initrd0.img
}

during booting process, it falls into a # terminal and am clueless.

I knew of this bug:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=650672

Is it not possible to boot Fedora 15 iso through grub2 ?

If extracting whole content of ISO to a directory, can grub2 be able to boot?

TIA+

[Skull One]

I was able to do this with the DVD (I guess it is the same for the livecd).
I have 2 partitions on my disk: the first is the system, and the second contains the iso.
Unfortunately, I have not saved my grub2 configuration before the installation but I think it was the following (using the logs from anaconda and my memory)

menuentry "Fedora 15 (DVD)" {
 insmod loopback
 insmod iso9660
 set isofile="/Fedora-15-x86_64-DVD.iso"
 loopback loop (hd0,2)$isofile
 linux (loop)/isolinux/vmlinuz rootfstype=auto  root=live:UUID=<Partition UUID>:$isofile ro quiet
 initrd (loop)/isolinux/initrd.img
}

Adapt the bold terms to your case.
Remark: anaconda taked a _very_ long time to start, and I had a black sreen with a blinking cursor for more than one minute (subjective time ). And the hardware probing also taked a long time, but after everything was fine.

[deepclutch]

@Skull One: it errors out : "you have to load kernel first" or something similar.

[Skull One]

Originally Posted by deepclutch

@Skull One: it errors out : "you have to load kernel first" or something similar.

I have checked on a livecd, and the files have a '0' in suffix.
Here the correction:

menuentry "Fedora 15 (LiveCD)" {
 insmod loopback
 insmod iso9660
 set isofile="/Fedora-15-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso"
 loopback loop (hd0,2)$isofile
 linux (loop)/isolinux/vmlinuz0 rootfstype=auto  root=live:UUID=<Partition UUID>:$isofile ro quiet
 initrd (loop)/isolinux/initrd0.img
}

with the bold terms to be adpted to your case.

[deepclutch]

I tried that also. but "dracut warning: no root is found root:live:/dev/disk/by-uuid:/Fedora15**"
BTW, Fedora iso is placed in / of /dev/sda2 and it's uuid is correct.
PS: I use a ext4 fs on this partition. is this an issue?

[Skull One]

Originally Posted by deepclutch

I tried that also. but "dracut warning: no root is found root:live:/dev/disk/by-uuid:/Fedora15**"
BTW, Fedora iso is placed in / of /dev/sda2 and it's uuid is correct.
PS: I use a ext4 fs on this partition. is this an issue?

Since it is a dracut message, it means that the initrd is launched.
So, it is a problem with the kernel options.
If your UUID is correct, I have no other idea for the moment...

[Skull One]

OK, I did some tests. In summary:
- no problem with the DVD;
- with the livecd, dracut cannot read the iso file (bug https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=650672)

So, the workaround is to extract the iso, for instance into the directory 'LiveCD', and the grub2 entry is then:

menuentry "Fedora 15 (LiveCD - extracted)" {
 insmod ext2
 set root='(hd0,2)'
 search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set <Partition UUID>
 linux /LiveCD/isolinux/vmlinuz0 rootfstype=auto  root=UUID=<Partition UUID> liveimg live_dir=/LiveCD/LiveOS/ ro quiet rhgb
 initrd /LiveCD/isolinux/initrd0.img
}

with the bold terms to be adapted to your case, and the red term being the directory where the iso is extracted.
I am not sure that the 'search' line is really relevant, but I have not tested without it.
Enjoy !


Edit: of course there is no problem with the DVD, since we just launch the installer and there is no need to mount the filesystem, which is where dracut hangs. The terms root=... is irrelevant for the DVD.

[deepclutch]

@Skull One: Yes! it worked. after extracting Fedora Iso, it booted fine. I am posting from the live Fedora session. Thanks for the help.

While Booting, grub2 showed some error which I cannot recollect. but, after that error message, grub transfers to Fedora boot sequence.. may be the line starting with "search --no-floppy" may not be needed.

Thanks!

edit: the error was caused by the line " search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set <Partition UUID>" which is not needed.

Thanks Again

[oxplot]

Despite being a year old issue, there still isn't an official solution to it from Fedora.

For benefit of others looking for a temporary solution besides extracting files, I have written a shell script which patches the initrd of the ISO image in order to allow using live:/*.iso boot parameter for the Live CD:

https://gist.github.com/2132076

Example of usage is in the comments.

Enjoy!

[intelx86]

MultiBootUSB supports the booting of the latest Fedora (16) using a USB Flash Disk Drive.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/multibootusb/

[Valent]

I have finally found a script that actually works booting Fedora 18 iso from usb:
http://git.marmotte.net/git/glim/plain/fedora18-fromiso

Details are here:
http://git.marmotte.net/git/glim/plain/README

Cheers,
Valent.