How to prepare an ISO 9660 CD for booting via GRUB ?

[Thomas Schmitt]

Hi,

> Your question is how to make a cd with grub on it ?

Yes.

GNU xorriso is like cdrtools + growisofs in
one single binary.
My question about GRUB on CD shall improve the
mkisofs-like aspect of xorriso. I am able to
influence ISO image production in any detail.
But i need instructions how to prepare it so
that a PC BIOS starts GRUB correctly.

I expect a BIOS to ignore the first 16 blocks
of a CD unless an El Torito record points to
an address in there.

Robert Millan's example
> >    cat boot.img core.img>  tmp
> >    mkisofs --embedded-boot tmp -o grub.iso -r somedir
places GRUB files into those 16 blocks.
But it does not produce an El Torito record
when run with his latest mkisofs and a dummy
file "tmp".
So either his mkisofs wants to see real GRUB
files or my theory about BIOS + CD + GRUB is
wrong.


> menuentry "ISO Live - Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic AMD64" {
> insmod loopback
> insmod iso9660
> set isofile="/iso/lucid-desktop-amd64.iso"

Interesting example. It is astounding what one
can do with a bootloader nowadays.

It would be in my current focus of interest,
if that ISO image itself is equipped with
GRUB and boots from real CD. In that case i
would like to know an URL for downloading it.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas