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

[Drake Donahue]

On Thu, 2010-04-01 at 19:59 +0200, Thomas Schmitt wrote:
> 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
> 
> 
> 
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Attached is a script I use to make a legacy grub booting cd that
provides an alternate way to boot the system it was built on.

grubcd
Description: Text document