I was wanting to try out an older version of Ubuntu on my netbook; but I did not want to write the ISO image to a thumb drive to boot it; therefore I copied the ISO image to a subfolder of my /boot folder; /boot/iso and then I added this section to my /etc/grub.d/40_custom file to enable me to boot a live Linux distribution ISO from the hard disk instead of the hassle of booting from a USB thumb drive and all that jazz.
#!/bin/sh
exec tail -n +3 $0
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries. Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment. Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.
menuentry "Ubuntu 10.10 ISO" {
set isofile="/boot/iso/ubuntu-10.10-desktop-i386.iso"
loopback loop (hd0,1)$isofile
linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=$isofile noprompt noeject
initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz
}
I am doing this with Linux Mint 12 Debian edition and this is working perfectly. A good trick if you have downloaded an ISO on your laptop or netbook or even a desktop PC and you want to try it out before writing the ISO to anything. Just fill out the file above like I have and then run this command.
sudo update-grub
This will update the Grub bootloader and add the custom boot menu that will allow booting the ISO on your machine.
I am a computer enthusiast that has always been interested in maintaining and upgrading computer hardware. I was born on a farm and lived there for 13 years before moving into town. I was always interested in technology and my father always gave me good encouragement for developing my knowledge and interest in tinkering with computers. He was using a computer on the farm but that was in the very late 80`s and late 90`s. Seeing what a computer could do always fascinated me and then I knew that is what I wanted to do. The first time I used Linux was Red Hat 6.2 installed off a single CDROM and I was amazed that you did not need to install any more drivers on my old Intel Celeron machine to be able to enjoy a nice 24BPP desktop and use the GIMP to edit photos and enjoy playing the old Linux games like Xbill. Then a while later I tried Mandrake Linux 9.2 and I was hooked. It came with so much software and was very easy to use as well. Then Mandrake Linux 10 and on through FreeBSD, Debian 3.0, Debian 3.1 Suse Linux 9.2, Suse 10 and onto the Ubuntu distributions although I am using Fedora Core 15 and the Gnome 3 desktop at the moment.