More than one distro on a dvd?

[noob420]

Newbie searched can't find!
 Is there a way to put more than one distro on a DVD? I am guessing there is a way to configure Grub to give a choice on which Live CD to boot. I am thinking my searches are off because of terminology(?) ie: code or compile, etc.. Windows to Linux words??
Links to info would be great, would help to learn the best way to find stuff in the forums. 

[Just17]

Yes it is possible.
I did it some years ago before I moved almost exclusively to USB sticks.

I will have a look and see if I made any notes (and can find them if I did!    )

[Just17]

I know I had a couple of posts on the subject in 2008/2009 but they seem to have been culled.

This link might be helpful

http://pcquest.ciol.com/content/enterprise/2005/105070101.asp

I believe I took a slightly different approach, but cannot now be sure  

***********
Here are some notes from 2008 ....  cannot say if I followed this scheme or not.
I suspect not, TBH.

what you do is create a folder call it multi-os,
inside that folder you create a folder for each of the distro's you want to boot.
create a boot folder
extract the iso of each distro to it's named folder
extract or copy the necessary boot files into the boot folder (grub etc)

now just gunzip each initrd.gz, one at a time is best, then mount the extracted initrd.gz
this must be done as root, you would need to first make a folder to mount the initrd to

Example:

gunzip /home/user/Desktop/mult-os/minime/isolinux/initrd.gz
mkdir /home/user/Desktop/iso
mount -o loop /home/user/Desktop/multi-os/zen/isolinux/initrd    /home/user/Desktop/iso

kwrite /home/user/Desktop/iso/linuxrc

search for  BASEIMG  (at "line 41" in the example that was noted)

It read
BASEIMG="livecd"

Change that to read
BASEIMG="minime/livecd"  (or whatever ISO is in use)

Save the file. Unmount the ISO ...  umount /home/user/Desktop/iso

gzip /home/user/Desktop/multi-os/minime/isolinux/initrd

Repeat for each ISO to be used.

then edit menu.lst to show all the distros .....  this is the menu.lst in /multi-os/boot/grub/

An example entry

title Minime
kernel (cd)/minime/isolinux/vmlinuz livecd=livecd initrd=initrd.gz root=/dev/rd/3 acpi=on vga=788 keyb=us splash=silent fstab=rw,auto
initrd (cd)/minime/isolinux/initrd.gz

Add an entry for each distro.

Now create an ISO of the lot ....

mkisofs -R -b boot/grub/stage2_eltorito -no-emul -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -o Multi-OS.iso   /home/user/Desktop/multi-os/

*********

I cannot say if this scheme can be used today.
All I can say is that it worked in 2008.

Also, I suspect there are easier ways of achieving the desired result these days.

****

I found a file with some menu.lst entries from such a multi-os ISO --- from about the same year ......

title Puppy Seamonkey
kernel (cd)/pupseamonkey/vmlinuz
initrd (cd)/pupseamonkey/initrd.gz

title Boot CentOS-5.2-i386-LiveCD
kernel (cd)/centos/isolinux/vmlinuz0
initrd=(cd)/centos/isolinux/initrd0.img root=/dev/rd/3 rootfstype=iso9660 ro quiet liveimg

title Myah OS
kernel /myahos/vmlinuz vga=791 splash=silent ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw autoexec=/sbin/xconf
initrd=/myahos/initrd.gz

title Myah OS
kernel (cd)/myahos/vmlinuz vga=791 splash=silent ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw autoexec=/sbin/xconf
initrd=(cd)/myahos/initrd.gz

title  FaunOS
kernel (cd)/faunos/vmlinuzf vga=791 splash=silent,kdgraphics,theme:faunos quiet=y quiet loglevel=2
initrd (cd)/faunos/faunos.img

Maybe the above will give you some ideas.

It is so much easier to use a USB stick for this these days that I have not played with using a DVD since then.

[Just17]

I had a weird idea tonight and thought to try it 

I have a USB stick on which I have placed several live versions of PCLOS, using LiveUSB Creater from the repository.
This put all the LiveOSs on one partition.

I copied all the files from that partition to a directory on my HDD, with the intention of creating an ISO from these to hopefully run from CD.

I edited the menu.lst file in the new directory to reflect the fact it would be booting from DVD and not from USB HDD.

I then created an ISO .....  some 7.9GB in size ....  which of course I could not burn to a 4.7GB DVD I have here unfortunately.
Nevertheless I tested the ISO in VBox and all options booted.

Nice to know, should I ever need to do this 

[mr-roboto]

I had a weird idea tonight and thought to try it 

I have a USB stick on which I have placed several live versions of PCLOS, using LiveUSB Creater from the repository.
This put all the LiveOSs on one partition.

I copied all the files from that partition to a directory on my HDD, with the intention of creating an ISO from these to hopefully run from CD.

I edited the menu.lst file in the new directory to reflect the fact it would be booting from DVD and not from USB HDD.

I then created an ISO .....  some 7.9GB in size ....  which of course I could not burn to a 4.7GB DVD I have here unfortunately.
Nevertheless I tested the ISO in VBox and all options booted.

Nice to know, should I ever need to do this 

If one is willing to do it by hand, most distros will coexist on single CD/DVD/UFD.  I did the following for ISOLINUX.  The topic needs a refresh [RSN], but the only limitation is the willingness of an individual to do the work manually.  PCLOS is one of the easy ones....

[noob420]

While studying Linux, I started with Grub, LOL it seemed to make sense, start at the beginning and it is the 1st to run.
Can you use Grub to boot to GUI and then give a choice on which distro to load? Boot disk(boot partition?) then folders with each distro ISO. I like to play with GIMP and would like to make some graphics for this project. Like what PCLinuxOS does when there a few types installed(LXDE, XTCE, etc...) you have choices.
 I have downloaded the GRUB 2.0 manual and am starting to read it and figure this would be a good way to learn. Just jump in!   

[mr-roboto]

While studying Linux, I started with Grub, LOL it seemed to make sense, start at the beginning and it is the 1st to run.
Can you use Grub to boot to GUI and then give a choice on which distro to load? Boot disk(boot partition?) then folders with each distro ISO. I like to play with GIMP and would like to make some graphics for this project. Like what PCLinuxOS does when there a few types installed(LXDE, XTCE, etc...) you have choices.
 I have downloaded the GRUB 2.0 manual and am starting to read it and figure this would be a good way to learn. Just jump in!   

I take it you mean, you'd like to have a menu that permits [for example] PCLOS-LXDE, PCLOS-KDE, PCLOS-XFCE, etc on a single DVD ?  GRUB is very flexible and the most powerful of these tools, so yeah no prob.  You can definitely have a main menu page w/ a sub-menu assigned to each PCLOS variant or any other distro.  As I said above, as long as you're willing to do the work manually....

[joechimp]

Well this is quite the informative thread. Such great ideas.
I am impressed at how thorough the information is.
I believe I might try this just because I can.
Thanks all.

[noob420]

Thanks I thought so. Now comes the learning curve! LOL To help me on my way is there a way to copy the GRUB files on my PCLinuxOS install for study? That way I can look at them cause I know they work great! I have already downloaded the manual and discovered WIKI. Here goes.

[noob420]

Thank You! after some more input I'll try that!

[mr-roboto]

Suspect that no one is still interested, but nevertheless I endeavor to cook up a very simple, Linux-based means of replicating this:

Have two flavors of PCLOS and five more flavors from other sources.  Too bad there isn't a Linux-based IsoBurn....

PS:  The above is courtesy of ISOLINUX 4.06, yet another wrinkle I must address....