Installing Linux from an iso image under Windows

This article will help you install any Linux distribution from a Windows machine directly from an iso-image on your hard disk. The article can help the owners of netbooks, as well as those who, for whatever reason, can not use the usual installation disk.

Installing Grub4Dos

First, download Grub4Dos. At the time of this writing, the latest stable version was Grub4Dos 0.4.4 .

Win XP / 2000

• Unpacking grldr and menu.lst from the archive to the root of the drive with Windows installed.
• Edit the boot.ini . You may need to remove the “read only” attribute to be able to save the file.
  

    attrib -r boot.ini 

• Add to the end of the file
  

    C: \ grldr = "Grub4Dos" 

Win Vista / 7

• Unpack grldr , grldr.mbr and menu.lst from the archive to the root of the disk with Windows installed.
• We start the console on behalf of the administrator and we execute
  

    bcdedit / create / d "Grub4Dos" / application bootsector 

• In response to the previous command, we get the id of the created record, which we substitute in the next three
  

    bcdedit / set {id} device partition = C:
   bcdedit / set {id} path \ grldr.mbr
   bcdedit / displayorder {id} / addlast
  

More detailed installation instructions for Grub4Dos can be found here .

Edit menu.lst

Add a new item in the menu of the loader
')

 title boot installer
 fallback 1
 root (hd0,1)
 kernel / vmlinuz vga = normal ramdisk_size = 14972 root = / dev / rd / 0 rw -
 initrd /initrd.gz

Here we substitute the disk number and partition number on yours. If Ubuntu is installed, then you can download ( amd64 ) the necessary images of vmlinuz and initrd.gz . In other cases, they can be found in the iso-image of the distribution itself. For reference, I give a small table of names in different distributions.

Ubuntu	vmlinuz	initrd.gz
Debian	vmlinuz	initrd.gz
Fedora	vmlinuz	initrd.img
Mandriva	vmlinuz	all.rdz
openSUSE	linux	initrd
Slackware	bzImage	initrd.img
Gentoo	gentoo	gentoo.igz

Now copy the iso-image of the distribution kit into the resulting heap and reboot.

Installation

Perhaps the installation is slightly different in different distributions. I will look at the installation using the example of Ubuntu.

After the reboot, a new item will appear in the Download Manager. Choose


The Grub4Dos bootloader will appear. Choose “Boot Installer”


The installer prompts you to select a language. Choose our great and mighty


Perhaps the installer will not be able to find the image


In this case, you need to restart the search from the main menu and specify the location manually.

After selecting the image, a few more familiar windows will appear and installation will begin.

Edit menu.lst. Option # 2

An alternative menu.lst option is also possible.

  title boot installer
 fallback 1
 find --set-root / image_name.iso
 map / image_name.iso (0xff) ||  map --mem / image_name.iso (0xff)
 map --hook
 chainloader (0xff)
 savedefault --wait = 2 

There is no need for additional gestures - the familiar Ubuntu installer will boot.


Since the image is loaded from the hard disk, I advise you to pre-allocate the partition under the OS and swap before starting the installation.