Apr 26, 2008

HOWTO - Run Backtrack3 from iso on harddisk in 5 steps

I used to run backtrack3 from CD quite often but it was a hassle to carry the cd around. Moreover i already had a few OSs installed in my laptop..so installation to harddisk was also ruled out as i didnt want to mess up my partitions . So this is what i did to run it directly from the iso on my harddisk

I used grub but this may work on lilo also.This may work for all Slax based distros since it uses the "slax from=" option

1. Get Backtrack3 iso from http://www.remote-exploit.org/backtrack_download.html

2. Mount the iso file
sudo mount -o loop /path/to/iso/bt3b141207.iso ./backtrackiso

3. Copy the vmlinuz and initrd.gz files from backtrackiso/boot to your boot dir as vmlinuz-backtrack & initrd.backtrack.gz

4. Insert this to your /boot/grub/menu.lst

title Backtrack-from-iso
root (hd0,6) This should be the partition with your boot
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-backtrack slax from=/dev/sda10/path/to/iso/bt3b141207.iso root=/dev/ram0 sda10 is where i have my iso file
initrd /boot/initrd.backtrack.gz

5. Save and reboot. If everything goes fine you will boot into BT3

Posted by Jatheendra at 5:42 PM

3 comments:

  1. CoolbreezeJune 27, 2008 at 7:40 PM

    i did try to make my system run from the backtrack3 iso but am getting an error file not found. this is my /boot/grub/menu.lst
    title Backtrack-from-iso
    root (hd0,6) This should be the partition with your boot
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-backtrack slax from=/home/morpheus/iso/bt3b141207.iso root=/dev/ram0 sda10 is where i have my iso file
    initrd /boot/initrd.backtrack.gz

    this will help me alot from walking with my live CD.. thanks

    ReplyDelete
  2. JatheendraJune 27, 2008 at 9:46 PM

    :-) Sorry that i forgot to highlight the comments

    please try with this

    title Backtrack-from-iso
    root (hd0,6)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-backtrack slax from=/home/morpheus/iso/bt3b141207.iso root=/dev/ram0
    initrd /boot/initrd.backtrack.gz

    change (hdo,6) to what ever is urs

    hope it helps
    :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJuly 29, 2008 at 3:21 AM

    another way to do this, should work for every livecd, would be to copy the content of the livecd to a partition, then copy the relevant entry isolinux.cfg to your menu.lst (the default should do the job).
    cut the initrd section and put it together, so that it matches the grub syntax, here for example for sabayon:

    LABEL sabayon
    menu label ^Start Sabayon Linux 3.5
    kernel /boot/sabayon
    append root=/dev/ram0 initrd=/boot/sabayon.igz aufs init=/linuxrc cdroot looptype=squashfs max_loop=64 loop=/livecd.squashfs splash=silent,theme:sabayon vga=791 CONSOLE=/dev/tty1 quiet music --

    title Start Sabayon Linux 3.5
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel /boot/sabayon root=/dev/ram0 aufs init=/linuxrc cdroot looptype=squashfs max_loop=64 loop=/livecd.squashfs splash=silent,theme:sabayon vga=791 CONSOLE=/dev/tty1 quiet music --
    initrd /boot/sabayon.igz

    i actually tested this with ubuntu, backtrack, dsl and sabayon.

    when booting this from usb you have to figure out how your pc handles the disks. i have to say (hd0,0) in grub, which would be the first harddisk, but it will be /dev/sdb in the os, which is the second harddisk. keep this in mind when grub says file not found. example for dsl:

    title Damn Small Linux
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel /boot/isolinux/linux24 root=/dev/sdb1 ro lang=us toram noeject frugal
    initrd /boot/isolinux/minirt24.gz

    ReplyDelete

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