Howto boot Quantian without a cdrom via grub or lilo

This HOWTO was contributed by Marco Caliari, who also created the miniroot files described here. Thanks, Marco!

The following procedure is useful for testing .iso images, as well as for installations where use of a cdrom (or dvd) may not be practical, possible or efficient.

This procedire also provides a clever way to add the rich set of application Quantian provides in a small space as it requires only slightly more diskspace that the compressed .iso image itself. It can be extended easily to allow a menu-driven selection between several iso files, which could even come from different Knoppix variants.

Downloading the boot files

Other than the .iso, we need at least two files, a kernel and an initrd image. The archive (miniroots.tar.gz) containing all the kernels (linux24, migshm24 and linux26) and the initrd images (minirt24.gz, migrt24.gz and minirt26.gz, respectively) can be downloaded from Debian's Alioth site.

Copy the right files in the right place

Now, suppose that /dev/hda1 is your root device (which should be formatted for either an Ext2, Ext3 or ReiserFS file system) containing boot as directory: then copy the kernels and the miniroots in boot/ and the .iso in /. Then, you have to modify the Grub configuration file menu.lst (usually in /boot/grub) or the LILO configuration file lilo.conf (usually in /etc), according to your boot manager.

The Grub setup

First, save a backup copy of menu.lst. Then add to the file the following rows

title Quantian kernel 2.4
   root (hd0,0)
   kernel /boot/linux24 ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init lang=us apm=power-off vga=791 nomce quiet fromhd=/dev/null bootfrom=/dev/hda1/*.iso config=scan home=scan noprompt
   initrd /boot/minirt24.gz

title Quantian kernel 2.4 migshm
   root (hd0,0)
   kernel /boot/migshm24 ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init lang=us apm=power-off vga=791 nomce quiet fromhd=/dev/null bootfrom=/dev/hda1/*.iso config=scan home=scan noprompt
   initrd /boot/migrt24.gz

title Quantian kernel 2.6
   root (hd0,0)
   kernel /boot/linux26 ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init lang=us apm=power-off vga=791 nomce quiet fromhd=/dev/null bootfrom=/dev/hda1/*.iso config=scan home=scan noprompt
   initrd /boot/minirt26.gz

Now you should be ready to reboot.

The LILO setup

First, save a backup copy of /etc/lilo.conf. Then add to the file the following rows

image=/boot/linux24
     label=Quantian24
     root=/dev/hda1
     initrd=/boot/minirt24.gz
     append="ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init lang=us apm=power-off vga=791 nomce quiet fromhd=/dev/null bootfrom=/dev/hda1/*.iso config=scan home=scan noprompt"

image=/boot/migshm24
     label=Quantian24shm
     root=/dev/hda1
     initrd=/boot/migrt24.gz
     append="ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init lang=us apm=power-off vga=791 nomce quiet fromhd=/dev/null bootfrom=/dev/hda1/*.iso config=scan home=scan noprompt"

image=/boot/linux26
     label=Quantian26
     root=/dev/hda1
     initrd=/boot/minirt26.gz
     append="ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init lang=us apm=power-off vga=791 nomce quiet fromhd=/dev/null bootfrom=/dev/hda1/*.iso config=scan home=scan noprompt"

Different configurations

If, for example, you put the .iso on the root of /dev/hda5 and you have a boot device /dev/hda1 mounted on /boot, the configuration file for Grub becomes

title Quantian kernel 2.4
   root (hd0,0)
   kernel /linux24 ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init lang=us apm=power-off vga=791 nomce quiet fromhd=/dev/null bootfrom=/dev/hda5/*.iso config=scan home=scan noprompt
   initrd /minirt24.gz

and for LILO

image=/linux24
     label=Quantian24
     root=/dev/hda1
     initrd=/minirt24.gz
     append="ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init lang=us apm=power-off vga=791 nomce quiet fromhd=/dev/null bootfrom=/dev/hda5/*.iso config=scan home=scan noprompt"

and so on.

Extensions should be straightforward. See the Lilo or Grub or Mini-HOWTOs for more documentation.