Howto boot the Damn Small Linux ISO from hard disk with Grub

Just this evening I wanted to install Damn Small Linux on one of my computers. But I had no more blank CDs left, so I searched for a way to boot the ISO from hard disk with GRUB, as Xubuntu was already installed on the machine. Well I found a lot of crap and nothing worked for me. I really think that there is no quick and easy solution. I tried a few things out and came out with the following way:

• At first, you need some extra space on your hard disk. If you want to install DSL it would be better to boot off an other partition, too. I used my 512MB swap partition for that purpose, but I think that also a little more than 50MB are already enough for DSL.

• Boot into some Linux system of your choice, this could even be Knoppix from CD. Then, execute carefully (!!) the following steps:

1. Make sure that your swap partition isn't in use. (swapon -s, swapoff /dev/hdXX)
2. Change the type of the swap partition to 0x83 with fdisk.
3. Use mkfs.ext2 to create a new file system on your old swap partition. (mkfs.ext2 /dev/hdXX)
4. Mount your new ext2 partition (mount /dev/hdXX /somefolder)
5. Mount the DSL ISO to some folder. (mount dsl.iso /someotherfolder -o loop)
6. Copy the contents of the ISO to your new ext2 partition. (cp -R /someotherfolder/* /somefolder)

Maybe this works also without the need for another partition, but I preferred to go the safe way.

• Now you'll need Grub. Reboot. I had to press 'ESC' to get into the Grub menu when starting Xubuntu. Go into Command Mode with 'c', then execute the following commands:

1. root (hd0,2) # hd0,2 was my old swap partition; that is /dev/hda3
2. kernel /boot/isolinux/kernel24 # So / would be the root of the DSL ISO
   
3. initrd /boot/isolinux/minirt24.gz
4. boot

Now, if you're lucky you'll see the DSL ASCII logo after you hit return. I think that this would work also pretty good for Knoppix, haven't tested it though. Hope this helps a bit!