[PLUG] UNetBootIn Curieawcity

[Ninad Pundalik]

Hi Dhanurdhari,

On 5 June 2013 00:30,  <plug-mail-request at plug.org.in> wrote:
> 1. create partitions on the pen/thumb drive.
> 2. copy different installable iso's onto thus created different
> partitions of thumb drive.
> 3. load oses from those partitions of the thumb drive.
> 4. partions of the thumb drive have non-similar file systems (e.g. if
> one partition is formatted btrfs, the other one could be ext4/3, and
> another one could be beos or something different.

1, 2 and 3 is what I have done. I haven't ventured into the realms of
4. All the linuxes I played around with were fine with ext2/3. Also,
these are experiments from 4 years ago, so you might need to test it
once today.

1 is simple. I used GParted, you might want to use fdisk. Whatever
floats your boat.
2 - Loop mount the iso and copy all files into the partition created
above. If that ISO is LILO/GrUB compatible, things are damn easy. If
it's ISOLinux, you'll need to take a little more effort in the next
step.
3 - My experiments were mostly with GrUB 1.x. The high level steps
remain the same, the actual changes differ for 2.x. Install grub on
the MBR for the thumb drive. For 1.x, I manually edited the grub.cfg
and used the appropriate grub commands. If it was ISOLinux, I had to
chainload here, otherwise directly provide the vmlinuz and initrd
paths to the right devices. For 2.x, the configuration file is a lot
more complicated, but the bare basic process is similar. I tried doing
this a few months ago, but it was all trial and error. So, I can't
help you right now with it.

Read the instructions for smaller distros like Slax, DSL and Puppy to
get an idea of the commands and the process.

Another tip: Plug the thumb drive to your box, boot up to the grub
shell, and probe all the different devices and partitions correctly on
it. Note it down (on a pen and paper), and then boot to your normal
Linux. Then, go and edit the grub cfg files. Also, remember that the
device numbers will differ, depending on whether the grub is from your
internal disk, or your thumb drive. So, set the root correctly. I had
to do a lot of trial and error for this.

HTH.

Ninad S. Pundalik
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