Creating a Multi OS (PCLOS) DVD ISO from LiveUSB set up

[Just17]

I have a LiveUSB created with LiveUSB creator which has several versions of PCLOS that boot from that USB stick.
Due to a discussion on the forum about multiboot DVDs I thought it might be nice to be able to have several versions of PCLOS on one ISO.

RIDER:  Because my USB has large releases/remasters the result would not fit on a DVD, so the only testing I was able to do is with VirtualBox. Please bear that in mind  

Procedure:
                   I copied all the files from the USB Stick partition (not including Lost & Found of course - if present) to a newly created directory at  /home/user/multi-os.
I then edited the menu.lst file that was copied to reflect the fact I would be using a CD/DVD for the result and not a USB. Not difficult, but necessary.

With that done I ran one command to produce the new multi-os ISO.

Command:

Code: [Select]

mkisofs -R -b boot/grub/stage2_eltorito -no-emul -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -o /media/1.5TB/Multi-OS.iso   /home/user/multi-os
where the new ISO was saved to /media/1.5TB/Multi-OS.iso   ..... because I did not have sufficient space on my /home/user partition.
The files I copied from USB were in the  /home/user/multi-os partition.

Menu.lst:

The menu.lst stanzas should follow the format for the CD .....  here are some entries for my project ..... I omitted the boot options 'quiet' and 'splash=silent' for my tests so that I could observe as much as possible during the boot .... as you can see the names of the files are those from creating a LiveUSB .....

Code: [Select]

timeout 10
color black/cyan yellow/cyan
gfxmenu /boot/gfxmenu
default 0


title   KDE_Full_Monty_
kernel /KDE_Full_Monty_1/vmlinuz livecd=/KDE_Full_Monty_1  root=/dev/rd/3 acpi=on vga=791 vmalloc=256M
initrd /KDE_Full_Monty_1/initrd.gz

title   KDE_Aug_2012_Minime_
kernel /KDE_Aug_2012_Minime_1/vmlinuz livecd=/KDE_Aug_2012_Minime_1  root=/dev/rd/3 acpi=on vga=791 vmalloc=256M
initrd /KDE_Aug_2012_Minime_1/initrd.gz

title   KDE_Aug_2012_Midi_
kernel /KDE_Aug_2012_Midi_1/vmlinuz livecd=/KDE_Aug_2012_Midi_1  root=/dev/rd/3 acpi=on vga=791 vmalloc=256M
initrd /KDE_Aug_2012_Midi_1/initrd.gz

title   test-dual-kernel1
kernel /test-dual-kernel1/vmlinuz livecd=/test-dual-kernel1  root=/dev/rd/3 acpi=on vga=791 vmalloc=256M
initrd /test-dual-kernel1/initrd.gz

title   test-dual-kernel2
kernel /test-dual-kernel1/vmlinuz2 livecd=/test-dual-kernel1  root=/dev/rd/3 acpi=on vga=791 vmalloc=256M
initrd /test-dual-kernel1/initrd2.gz

title   Memory Test
kernel /boot/memtest-4.20

It was a pleasant surprise to have the ISO build rather quickly ....  considering it was almost 8GB in size.

If I get the inclination I might test this with persistence settings and see what kind of results I get.
I imaging with the right boot option it might be possible to include any persistence present on the USB stick, in the multi-os ISO.
Whether it would work or not of course is another matter  

Anyway that's it.

My least stressful way of creating a multi-os PCLOS DVD