Re: How to install gparted live on grub boot menu?

[josep lladonosa capell]

Missatge de Bo Berglund <bo.berglund@gmail.com> del dia ds., 30 d’oct. 2021
a les 22:21:

> On Sat, 30 Oct 2021 18:21:29 +0200, josep lladonosa capell
> <jlladonosa@gmail.com> wrote:
> >Missatge de Bo Berglund <bo.berglund@gmail.com> del dia ds., 30 d’oct.
> 2021
> >a les 15:54:
> >
> >> Is there some easy to understand way which will do this?
> >>
> >> On Ubuntu Desktop:
> >> - Create new 1GB ext4 partition /dev/somepart1 using GParted on Ubuntu
> >> - sudo mkdir /mnt/gparted (create mount point)
> >> - sudo mount /dev/somepart1 /mnt/gparted
> >> - cd /mnt/gparted
> >> - wget
> >>
> https://downloads.sourceforge.net/gparted/gparted-live-1.3.1-1-amd64.iso
> >>
> >> Now I need to create the grub entry and this is where I have problems
> >> because of the mixup
> >> between grub and grub2 in the pages I have found.
> >>
> >> Can someone help filling in the final part of the actions I need?
> >> The end result should be to have a last line in the boot menu saying:
> >>
> >> GParted Live
>
> >>
> >Hello, Bo,
> >
> >From what I have read I suppose that you just want to boot an ISO image
> >from grub, right?
>
> Yes, I have a new 1 GB partition on my hdd (inside an extended partition)
> where
> I have downloaded the GParted Live ISO file.
> I want the system to use this to boot GParted Live from the boot menu.
>
> >One solution for me (I don't work on an EFI system, though) without extra
> >partitioning and without the need of a bootable USB device and which does
> >all the grub stuff for you  is just installing the package grub-imageboot.
> >Install it in your main Ubuntu bootable system (Desktop).
>
> I did this, it also installed something called memdisk into /boot
> Note that my ISO file is in a *separate partition* which is mounted on
> /boot/images via /etc/fstab using the UUID, so it is *not* part of the
> actual
> partition where the Ubuntu Desktop lives.
>

I have tested your setup in a virtualized EFI Xubuntu with a separate
partition mounted in /boot/images like you with the ISO in it and it could
not boot ISO file.

The update-grub command found the file and added the menu option, but...
after rebooting and selecting the menu option for ISO booting, it
complained with a "file not found".

After that, I moved the image to /boot, unmounted the /boot/images, removed
partition from /etc/fstab,
moved ISO file into /boot/images (note that images now is a directory in
the same partition as /boot).
Then, I did the update-grub and the ISO image booted from the grub menu.

So the conclusion is that the menu option for ISO of grub-imageboot default
installation needs having the images in the partition where /boot is, not
in another partition.

I cannot conclude that your configuration might work in some way (mounting
partition from grub?) but that's beyond my experience with grub.
I would go faster by just keeping the /boot/images directory in the same
partition than /boot.

Regards,
Josep


>
> >The grub-imageboot default configuration lets you boot the .iso images
> >found in the /boot/images/ directory. You can have a look at the
> >/etc/default/grub-imageboot file.
> >
> >After the copy of the iso file into /boot/images/, just do "sudo
> >update-grub" to make them appear into the grub boot menu.
>
> After I have done the apt install grub-imageboot and verified that the
> /boot/images dir now contains the ISO file (after mounting the GParted
> partition) I ran the sudo update-grub command which found the GParted iso
> file.
>
> >It works for me on Ubuntu and Debian too.
> >
>
> When I rebooted there *was* a new entry in the boot menu for GParted!
> "Bootable ISO Image: gparted-live-1.3.1-1-amd64"
>
> So far so good!
>
> But when I selected it the ISO did *not* load, instead I got an error:
>
> error: file '/boot/memdisk' not found.
> error: you need to load the kernel first.
> Press any key to continue
>
> Question:
> Are your systems multi-boot with several operating systems or just one?
> My contains 3 systems and I want to add a 4th, GParted Live
>
> It seems like the memdisk file is the key here, it is put by apt into
> /boot on
> the *running* desktop system and I don't understand how it can be
> accessible for
> the boot unless the desktop partition is also mounted...
>
> This seems to be the showstopper now.
>
>
> --
> Bo Berglund
> Developer in Sweden
>
>
>