Procedure or steps burning ISO/img file of a OS installer into a HDD partition

22 June 2023, 18:25:57

How're definitive steps on "burning" Iso/img file (of a OS installer, etc) into a HDD partition, instead of into USB flashdrive or CD, from which boot will be done as it's selected on grub menu list, but...

Its script in grub.cfg must be created manually, to have every clear, thorough working step besides os-prober is being failed, unusable, in trouble

Re: Procedure or steps burning ISO/img file of a OS installer into a HDD partition

Reply #1 – 22 June 2023, 19:31:00

Why would you need to do that, because an installer live cd is as suggested, nothing would persist - if you want to use it as a daily driven OS you can possibly force it to use persistance, but it would be redundant as changing drives with an install does the same thing (and for bsd's especially you won't run into troubles like UUID's). You of course can, and for UEFI mode you just copy the two partitions to the disk with e.g. gparted. Where would GRUB go in here, I don't know, you want a boot entry of that from your main os (very difficult), or you want grub on that install medium (you already asked that)?

If you want to boot an image file from some arbitrary place I would again use Ventoy, because in this case that grub script won't longer work. For a grub script to be created on your own, I doubt you'll find any help here. There is also the problem that grub is not as universal as you might think, if you need it for freebsd you'll run into troubles for instance, and this gets better asked on StackExchange Unix/Linux section.

If you want to apply an install image to a destination disk like e.g. MS Windows does with .wim images, again I doubt you'll find any help here, this is too specialized and i don't think any distro does it, probably in the BSD realm with proprietary tools that are paid for.

You can't boot from a USB stick/DVD/CD? Well did that ever work on your PC of question? You said you solved that. https://forum.artixlinux.org/index.php/topic,5593 And also what will stop you from taking the HDD out and putting it in a usb-to-sata adapter?

This is a continuation of this question of yours https://forum.artixlinux.org/index.php/topic,5554 that you didn't mark solved, out of curteousy i didn't merge it but, I ask you for a second time already, be more measured and correct with your questions. I know english is not your native language, and neither is mine, i try to be compassionate and understand what you mean but it doesn't help here. Thank you.

Re: Procedure or steps burning ISO/img file of a OS installer into a HDD partition

Reply #2 – 23 June 2023, 04:29:20

Loop mount the iso, copy the file system to a pre-prepared partition, then proceed much like a base install as detailed on the Artix wiki - edit fstab, set up user, locale, sudo or whatever, groups. The installation specific components are usually packages, track these down and uninstall them with pacman while chrooted. Sometimes there are weird things in installation isos like non-standard directory permissions, fix as required. Then run grub install and update-grub (if not booting from another OS) and mkinitcpio or just reinstall the kernel. If os-prober is failing try manually mounting the other partitions before running it, that might help it find them. A base install is probably a more sensible option than beating an iso installer OS into shape but it can be done for a fun challenge if you want to.