26
votes
Accepted
Is this possible to boot an OS from some kind of a file?
Yes, that's more or less how every Linux "live USB" system works. They all boot from a read-only filesystem image (often a .squashfs file).
The bootloader is not really involved (it gets out ...
- 429k
7
votes
Is this possible to boot an OS from some kind of a file?
Yes, this is entirely possible, and the following is one way
of doing it.
In Windows, you could have an entire disk with its file-system stored
in a .vhdx or a .vhd file.
Then you can use diskpart to ...
- 459k
5
votes
Is this possible to boot an OS from some kind of a file?
You might find the BeOS Personal Edition interesting. Released in 2000, this was a free version of the BeOS operating system that installed on a Windows 95/98 system. The OS image itself was simply ...
- 746
4
votes
Is this possible to boot an OS from some kind of a file?
Other answers describe what you probably were thinking of. This answer deliberately describes some concepts in a way you most likely did not think of.
Consider a different view; consider these facts:
...
- 69.9k
1
vote
How to boot system normally from grub prompt?
The grub command prompt and grub configuration language are both basically the same.
The simple way you can find out how to do this will be to read the menuenry {} from the file /boot/grub/grub.cfg. ...
- 273
1
vote
How to boot system normally from grub prompt?
The command normal should return to the menu. You should probably do this before manually unlocking the volume, as it's likely not smart enough to "resume" – it'll only you reinvoke the ...
- 429k
1
vote
configure grub to work with either UEFI or PC BIOS boot
Right now, I have to run grub2-install --target=x86_64-efi before moving the disk to a UEFI system and grub2-install --target=i386-pc before moving to a legacy PC BIOS system. That works fine (...
- 429k
1
vote
Is this possible to boot an OS from some kind of a file?
grub2 can boot from any ISO file that are setup as Casper bootable. The default Live ISO Ubuntu is Casper-compatible ISO, for example, and I've actually done this a couple times to have grub boot ...
- 4,527
1
vote
Boot failed - Initramfs dropped shell with NVMe disks not present
Had a similar issue. It turned out that a NVME boot required one of the modules from the linux-modules-extra-* package. So I had to do a boot from
Ubuntu-Live-Image, open a shell, and do about this:
...
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible