Since the topic of OS install came up briefly in this thread, I thought I’d ask the question: what methods of OS installation have you used? And is there any particular reason?
I have used debootstrap, which allows you to install directly from a running system without booting a separate install ISO. It’s all terminal commands, though you can do some of the prep work with GUI tools if you prefer. Details are on Installation/FromLinux - Community Help Wiki Though this page is pretty ancient, I don’t think a great deal has changed, apart from new filesystems.
Why use it? I have a PC Engines board which I use as a router. The only way to interact with the board at a low level is by serial connection, and I can’t be bothered these days with configuring an ISO to work over a serial line. Much easier to set up the next version of Ubuntu on a SD card, which the board will boot from. Once everything is working, including SSH for everyday use, I can then transfer the system to the mSATA board, tweak fstab and grub, and we’re in business.
Does anyone else do something odd like this?
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Interesting, I didn’t know this method. In my local team, we used to maintain a bootable disk to use it as a local server repository, syncing it with one official repository. Using a router to connect the computer that needs installation, we would use the “mini” ISO to install from the local server. We haven’t updated this for a while, so we are installing nowadays usually creating bootable USB sticks.
What I didn’t understand is the following. Is it possible to install to a computer which does not have Linux already using this system?
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Most likely, you can’t. I understand that you need a running Linux, even if only a live ISO. But who knows, someone clever may have worked out a way of doing it from Unix or even Windows.
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I use grml-rescueboot to install from an ISO downloaded into your directory
(My Ubuntu is on a PC in multiboot with other Linux and the new system is installed on a different partition.)
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/ISOBoot
You can have multiple ISOs in your directory and select the ISO to be installed from GRUB menu.
corrado@corrado-ns3-qq-0705:~$ cat /etc/default/grml-rescueboot
## Configuration file for Debian package grml-rescueboot.
# Location of ISOs:
# ISO_LOCATION="/boot/grml/"
ISO_LOCATION="/home/corrado/Downloads/"
...
corrado@corrado-ns3-qq-0705:~$ sudo update-grub
....
Found Ubuntu Questing Quokka (development branch) (25.10) on /dev/sdb4
Adding boot menu entry for UEFI Firmware Settings ...
Found grml-rescueboot ISO image: /home/corrado/Downloads//qq-0705.iso
done
I guess I started directly booting ISO with grub2 loopmount before some of the newer options like ventoy became available.
I used to use CD/DVDs but burned so many coasters that I changed to flash drives as soon as they became available.
Then started using grub to boot ISO first from flash drive, but then from another drive as I usually have at least two drives. Now often use external SSD which is almost as fast as internal.
I have created a FAT32 partition & just extracted ISO into it. Had to temporarily move boot flag. A few older versions of Ubuntu had one file that FAT32 complained about. A few versions also had issues with grub2’s loopmount. But most have worked without issue.
Used same loopmount with some other distributions to test install process and grub. Found Ubuntu’s grub is hard coded efi_distributor to be “ubuntu”, so even when changing /etc/default/grub’s distributor to “kubuntu” and new uefi entry created, it still uses /EFI/ubuntu/grub.cfg to boot, not new UEFI entries /EFI/kubuntu/grub.cfg.
These are some interesting alternative ways of booting/installing Ubuntu, which I’d like to try sometime. Thanks.
