[solved :=)]multiple live iso's on a usb

Question

I _know_ this is not a arch-related question, so before anyone jumps at me ... I do apologize!
I always carry some live cd's with me wherever I go, more specifically - 'grml' and 'linuxmint'.
Why?
'grml' is the best collection of cli-tools I have ever come across.
'linuxmint' is about the only distro I have seen that just works right out of the box (ie out of the live-cd), wireless, sound, video - yeah man!
So - I want a bootable usb-stick that really, really should only contain the following (on _one_ single partition)
/grub (with the stage-1, stage-1,5 and stage-2 files as well as a menu.lst)
/grml_xxx.iso
/linuxmint-xxx.iso
/any_other.iso
ie I can set up grub - that's no problem - but how, oh dear - _how_ do I boot an iso from grub?
I have googles and read until my eyes go misty, but I have not found a satisfactory answer. Yes - there are suggestions about using grub2, extracting the iso's etc etc (unfortuneately, doing that, the names are the same (like boot and syslinux) so I have problems visualizing how it all could work.
Of course - what I _could_ do would be something like this:
/grub
/grml
|- extracted grml-iso
/linuxmint
|- extracted linuxmint-iso
I must admit - I haven't really tried out this solution.
Another way would be to have the extracted iso's on different (bootable) partitions and then chainload. I have tried that, but somehow it didn't work out for me.
Does anyone have a working solution?
I would prefer to use the 'old' grub - grub2 leaves me cold, but if I have to, I'll go with it.
I'm not too concerned about making it writeable - a straight emulation of r/o cd will do fine.
During my googles I have come across entries like "boot=live", "iso-scan/filename=/linuxmint-xxx.iso" and some other rarities that I cannot find in the grub documentation (they are on kernel-line of menu.lst). There are also things like "map --hook" that I can't find in the documentation.
I don't know whether or not I am being stupid - maybe those fancy entries are for grub2?
Any suggestions are (more than) welcome!
Last edited by perbh (2010-02-24 19:18:49)

Answer 1

I set the folder structure exactly as the link above says for grml.  so, created folder called /iso inside boot folder.
Redid the grub.cfg and sure enough, much to my surprise grml booted.
So, I've deduced that it's the /grmlsmall that's the cause as I deleted that part in all my attempts.
So in this example (link) from the above post I believe I can now put the iso back to the usb stick's root level with the rest of the iso's and edit out or change/shorten the /boot and /boot/iso parts - though I should need to leave the /grmlsmall/ for sure.
I guess for grml-medium there would need to be /grmlmedium  and for the full sized/regular grml perhaps just  /grml
The above's not very very clear though I hope it's clear enough if anyone's having the same problem.
have to have a think about this as I guess it's hardcoded or I've missed something as to why I need to have /grmlsmall/
menuentry "TEST Grml ISO folder small 2009.10" {
  loopback loop /boot/iso/grml-small_2009.10.iso
  linux (loop)/boot/grmlsmall/linux26 findiso=/boot/iso/grml-small_2009.10.iso apm=power-off lang=us boot=live nomce noeject noprompt --
  initrd (loop)/boot/grmlsmall/initrd.gz