How To Boot An ISO With GRUB2 (The Easy Way!)

If you want to try out a new Linux distro, be it the latest Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal daily ISO or any other (I've only tested it with Ubuntu though!) and don't want to burn a CD each time you want to try a new daily build (and you don't have an USB memory stick around), you can use a cool GRUB 2 feature that lets you boot a live CD ISO directly from your hard disk. You can also use this method to boot varous utilities such as Super Grub Disk, SystemRescueCD, Parted Magic and so on.

Usually, setting up GRUB 2 to boot an ISO can be quite a difficult process (well, not that difficult but for some reason it always failed for me) but you can do this with just a few clicks thanks to Unetbootin. This info is actually available on the Unetbootin website but I somehow missed it - until now (thanks to Usemos Linux).

I've recorded a video showing the Unetbootin Grub2 menu entry and then booting the latest Ubuntu 11.04 daily ISO using this method, however the video is very bad in quality (my cam sucks) so I didn't embed it into this post, but you can watch it @ YouTube if you want.

Install Unetbootin and set everything up for booting an ISO using Grub2

Warning: remember, when messing with Grub (or any application that modifies it), there are things that might go wrong so use this at your own risk and if you know how to fix it in case things go wrong.

1. Install Unetbootin:

In Ubuntu, simply run the following command to install it:

sudo apt-get install unetbootin

If you're not using Ubuntu and Unetbootin is not in your distro official repositories, download it from HERE.

Important: like Scirocco points out in a comment, there are issues with some Unetbootin versions which not only fail to work when trying to boot an ISO from the hard disk, but will also fail when you try to create a bootable USB. I've used Unetbootin 494 from GetDeb and everything worked fine so I suggest you use the same version. So if you're getting an error like this: "disk image not found. need to load kernel first", it's because of the Unetbootin version you're using.

2. Using Unetbootin to create a new Grub2 entry to boot the ISO:

In Unetbootin, select the "Diskimage" option, then browse for an ISO and under "Type" select "Hard Disk" and leave "/" for the "Drive", then click OK:

Once Unetbootin finishes, restart your computer and select "Unetbootin" in the GRUB2 menu. If the Grub2 menu doesn't show up, press and hold the SHIFT key.

Because Unetbootin extracts the ISO, you'll have to run it again when you want to boot a new ISO, even if it has the same name and is placed in the same location as the old one.

Removing the ISO from GRUB2 menu

The next time you'll launch Unetbootin, it will ask you the following: "Unetbootin is currently installed. Remove the existing version?" - this isn't about removing Unetbootin but about removing the Grub2 menu entry for Unetbootin (and the ISO). Select "OK" and the ISO will be removed from the menu.

Update: if using Unetbootin doesn't work for you, you can try the manual instructions Dan Sonny Radu posted in a comment below - it's not as easy as using Unetbootin though.

Update 2: reader payet07 mentioned in a comment below that this works with Burg too. "But with some themes (i.e gnome) no icons appears. You just have to change for another theme at boot (i.e ubuntu2) to see see it right". However, he used the manual method for settings this up.

Many thanks to Usemos Linux for the heads up!

Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal Daily Builds (ISO) Available For Download

Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal daily builds are available to download starting today.

If you want to try it out (WARNING: do not install it on a production machine), download an ISO and try it out in VirtualBox. Or better yet, install TestDrive and give it a go with 2 clicks.

The first Natty alpha is scheduled to be released on December 2nd (see the complete release schedule, here).

"TestDrive" The Latest Daily Ubuntu Development Build With A Click (Now With A GUI)

TestDrive is an Ubuntu application that is especially designed for non-technical users to easily download and run the latest Ubuntu development daily snapshot in a virtual machine. TestDrive also works for other Ubuntu flavours such as Kubuntu or Xubuntu.

You don't have to do anything, TestDrive will even handle the ISO download and later sync it (the first time you download an ISO it is fully downloaded but then the ISO can be synced using zsync so you won't have to download the whole ISO each time you want download the latest version). We already talked about TestDrive a while back so head over to that post for more info on TestDrive.

TestDrive used to be a command-line only application which is not exactly newbie friendly so a GUI was created (not yet fully ready - in fact it's quite ugly for now, but it works!). I wanted to post it a long time ago, but it just wouldn't work (for me anyway) but a recent update finally got TestDrive working so it should now work for everyone.

Since TestDrive now comes with a GUI, you don't have to edit a config file to use VirtualBox with TestDrive, select the virtual disk size or memory and so on - all of these are now available in the new GUI.

Beside the GUI, TestDrive also got a cool new feature: it can now run any Linux distribution ISO in a virtual machine. Simply go to File > New, then type a description, the ISO URL and the sync protocol (I suggest you choose zsync or rsync - but make sure that whatever you choose here is installed).

The first time you run TestDrive GTK Front-end (Applications > System Tools), you'll have to select an Ubuntu flavor / ISO (like Ubuntu Desktop) and then click on "Sync" - this will download the latest daily ISO:

Once the download is over, simply click on "Launch" and you'll have a working Ubuntu development (daily) build in a virtual machine:

Install TestDrive and TestDrive GTK Front-End in Ubuntu

If you're running the latest Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, the latest TestDrive as well as its GTK front-end are already in the repositories so you can skip adding the PPAs below.

To install both the command line version (required) and the TestDrive GTK front-end (GUI), you'll have to add 2 PPAs (Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx only):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:testdrive/ppa
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:testdrive-gtk/ppa

Then, to install TestDrive (and the GTK front-end), use the following commands in a terminal:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install testdrive testdrive-gtk

Boot ISO Files From Your USB Stick Using GRUB2

You can already create an ISO with multiple Linux distributions using MultiCD but if you want to use GRUB 2 on your USB memory stick, rrw has a really nice how-to for doing this.


Using his how-to, you can of course boot multiple ISO files like with MultiCD. Read all about it HERE.

Easily Create A Custom Ubuntu Live CD With Ubuntu Customization Kit (UCK)

When Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx comes out, I will probably upgrade instead of doing a fresh install. But I will also create an .ISO file for various usages and my Ubuntu Live CD will have GIMP installed by default (among other changes I will make to my custom ISO)! I'm not going to comment on the decision to exclude GIMP from the default Lucid installation, but I don't want to accept it so I will make a custom Ubuntu Lucid Lynx Live CD.

Ubuntu doesn't support customization before downloading the ISO, but you can customize your Ubuntu Live CD by using UCK - Ubuntu Customization Kit.

Ubuntu Customization Kit is a GUI tool that helps you customizing official Ubuntu Live CDs (including Kubuntu/Xubuntu and Edubuntu) to your needs. You can add any package to the live system, for example language packs, or applications.

Using Ubuntu Customization Kit (UCK)

To use UCK, you will need (download link at the end of the post):

1. about 5 GB of free disk space in ~/tmp
2. Internet access for fetching language packs
3. apt-source line "deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic main" enabled (necessary for bootlogo building) - "karmic" should be changed if you use a different Ubuntu version.


If you want to build an ISO for an Ubuntu version other than the once you are currently using, you must open your /etc/apt/sources.list and search and replace (temporarily) any occurrence of your current Ubuntu version with the Ubuntu version you want to build the ISO for. Doing this is pretty easy: press ALT + F2, enter:

gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

If for instance you are using Ubuntu Karmic and want to create an Lucid ISO (obviously, you will also need the Lucid ISO), replace "karmic" with "lucid" and save the file. Don't forget to revert the changes after you finish building your custom ISO (repeat the steps above, and replace "lucid" with "karmic" - in my example).

Note: If customizing a CD for another architecture than the installation used for customization the executables from the LiveCD may not run.

If you don't want to build a custom language ISO, you can simply click OK on the first 2 configuration screens, select your default Ubuntu .iso downloaded from the website, then just choose yes when asked if you want to customize the ISO. After this, the fun part begins: you can choose to open the UCK Package Manager which is basically Synaptic, but for UCK and then you can install new packages and remove others:

You can also chose to select which packages to add / remove, via a terminal.

Once you are done with the customizations, select "Continue building":

Now all you have to do is wait for UCK to finish your custom Ubuntu ISO. On a slow computer, it cant take quite a while. Once the ISO file is ready, it will be saved under ~/tmp/remaster-new-files/livecd.iso.

For a more advanced way of customizing your Ubuntu Live CD (manually, without a GUI), see this HOW-TO.

Download Ubuntu Customization Kit

Update: we've recently discovered a web service for doing this, with more advanced options: Web Based Ubuntu And Debian Custom Installation / Live CD Creation Service

Download Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx .ISO

As you probably know, the work on the next Ubuntu version 10.04 called Lucid Lynx has already begun. Until now, there was no ISO available and you had to do a little 'hacking' in order to use Lucid.

But now you can already download a development release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx from HERE. Obviously, this should only be used for testing purposes!

Happy testing!

Furius ISO Mount: Application For Mounting Files In Ubuntu Linux

Furius ISO Mount is a user friendly Gtk+ Interface to Mount ISO, IMG, BIN, MDF and NRG Image files without burning to disk.

Features:

• Automatically Mounts ISO, IMG, BIN, MDF and NRG Image Files.
• Automatically creates a mount point in your home directory.
• Automatically Unmounts the Image files.
• Automatically removes the mount directory to return your home directory to its previous state.
• Automatically saves the history of the last 10 images mounted.
• Mounts multiple images.
• Burn ISO and IMG Files to optical disk.
• Generate Md5 and SHA1 checksums.
• Automatically retrieves any previously unmounted images.
• Automatically generates a log file of all commands needed to mount and unmount images manually.
• Supports Drag n Drop automatic mounting of images (Python version only)
• Can be used without installation/compiling (Python version only)
• Localizable (Mono version only. Currently Czech, Danish, French, Hungarian, Italian, German, Polish, Slovenian, Spanish and Turkish are available.

Before using Furious ISO Mount, you must run the following command in a terminal:

sudo adduser [your login username] fuse

Download Furius ISO Mount (Ubuntu .deb and source files available)

How To 'Upgrade' Your Ubuntu Karmic ISO With Zsync

zsync is a file transfer program similar to rsync. zsync is optimized for distribution of files across Internet, with one file on a server to be distributed to thousands of downloaders.

To install zsync in Ubuntu, just paste this in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install zsync

We can use this to update our Karmic ISO to the latest version. For instance, if you have previously downloaded Ubuntu Karmic Koala Alpha 6 ISO, you can run the following command:

zsync -i karmic-desktop-i386.iso http://releases.ubuntu.com/karmic/ubuntu-9.10-beta-desktop-i386.iso.zsync

This will basically read your karmic-desktop-i386.iso from the hard disk and compare it to the ubuntu-9.10-beta-desktop-i386.iso file from the Ubuntu download server and update your local image with the new version.

[via unix lab]

OpenDisc: Open Source Software Collection For Windows [ISO]

OpenDisc is an amazing collection of open source software for Windows, which comes with a front-end for easy installing and learning about these application. The software collection comes on a DVD (.iso image - aprox. 825 mb in size) and consists of six different software categories: Design, Games, Multimedia, Internet, Utilities and Productivity.

The two main goals of the project are:

• To provide a free alternative to costly software, with equal or often better quality equivalents to proprietary, shareware or freeware software for Microsoft Windows.
• To educate users of Linux as an operating system for home, business and educational use.

OpenDisc comes with the following open-source applications:

* Design: Blender, Dia, Gimp, Inkscape, Nvu, Scribus, Tux Paint.
* Games: The Battle for Wesnoth, Neverball, Enigma, Sokoban YASC.
* Multimedia: Audacity, Celestia, Really Slick Screensavers, Stellarium, Sumatra PDF, VLC.
* Internet: Azureus, FileZilla, Firefox, HTTrack, Pidgin, RSSOwl, SeaMonkey, Thunderbird, TightVNC, WinSCP.
* Utilities: 7-Zip, Abakt, Clamwin, GTK+, HealthMonitor, TrueCrypt, Workrave.
* Productivity: GnuCash, MoinMoin, Notepad2, OpenOffice.org.

I must say I would have quite quite a few suggestions for this list...

Screenshots:

Looking for an open-source way to burn the OpenDisc CD? Try InfraRecorder.

Download OpenDisc

Complete System Rescue Disk Based on Linux: SystemRescueCd

SystemRescueCd is a Linux system rescue disk available as a bootable CD-ROM or USB stick for administrating or repairing your system and data after a crash. It aims to provide an easy way to carry out admin tasks on your computer, such as creating and editing the partitions of the hard disk. It comes with a lot of linux software such as system tools (parted, partimage, fstools, ...) and basic tools (editors, midnight commander, network tools). It can be used to perform admin tasks on both Linux and Windows.

System tools included

• GNU Parted creates, resizes, moves, copies partitions, and filesystems (and more).
• GParted GUI implementation using the GNU Parted library.
• Partimage popular opensource disk image software which works at the disk block level
• FSArchiver flexible archiver that can be used as both system and data recovery software
• File systems tools (for Linux and Windows filesystems): format, resize, and debug an existing partition of a hard disk
• Ntfs3g: enables read/write access to MS Windows NTFS partitions.
• sfdisk saves / restores partition table (and more).
• Test-disk tool to check and undelete partition, supports reiserfs, ntfs, fat32, ext2/3 and many others
• Memtest+ to test the memory of your computer (first thing to test when you have a crash or unexpected problems)
• Network tools (Samba, NFS, ping, nslookup, ...) to backup your data across the network

Browse the short system tools page for more details about the most important software included.

Browse the detailed package list for a full list of the packages.

The latest version, 1.2.3 was released just a few days ago and among the changes are:

o Updated the alternative kernels to Linux-2.6.27.29
o Updated sys-fs/e2fsprogs to 1.41.8 (ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem tools)
o Updated app-arch/dump to 0.4b42 (better support for ext4)
o Updated sys-fs/ntfs3g to version 2009.4.4-AR16 (ntfs-3g advanced release)
o Added missing firmwares (package sys-kernel/linux-firmware)
o Initial support for sys-block/partclone-0.1.1
o Updated sys-block/gparted to 0.4.6
o Updated sys-apps/parted to 1.9.0

SystemRescueCd is very easy to use. Just download the ISO file, and burn it. Under Linux, you just need cdrecord, and you can use Nero under Windows. When the CD-ROM is burned, you can boot it.

Info on how to use SystemRescueCD on a USB stick | Download SystemRescueCd