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Ubuntu has a LiveCD version that is able to boot alongside the regular installation and is useful for tasks like repartitioning the system drive.

I am able to put the LiveCD onto a CD/DVD or USB media.

How can I put the LiveCD onto an internal hard drive such that it is installed alongside the main installation? I would imagine that it would be useful for performing such maintenance tasks as well as if I want to test software without persisting changes.

Note that from the installed LiveCD partition, I'd expect that it runs just as if I had booted it off a CD/DVD/USB in that it loads up a live environment and stores changes in memory without touching disks until I manually mount them.

3 Answers 3

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Grub-n-ISO

You can boot from an iso file via grub in your installed system. It is possible to configure it in the file /etc/grub.d/40_custom and make it active by running

sudo update-grub

which copies its menuentry to /boot/grub/grub.cfg.

This is described in detail via the following links and links from them,

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you can do exactly this, ubuntu has a step by step guide for doing it from linux, it involves making a new partition and setting up grub to read it as an operating system - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromLinux

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All maintenance software in the Live CD can be installed into your existing Ubuntu installation too. Take GParted partition manager for example, you can install it by executing this in terminal: sudo apt-get install gparted. You can perform operation such as resizing or deleting partitions from Ubuntu itself using GParted: right click on target partition (except the current Ubuntu partition itself) and unmount it, then you can modify the partition. Do be careful when working with partitions.

If it is the Ubuntu partition itself you want to modify, then you will either have to use a Live CD or Live USB. Or being fancy, you can have multiple Ubuntu installation in the same hard disk on a different partition from the first Ubuntu installation. By default Ubuntu doesn't mount any partition automatically anyway.

Even more fancy (and safer), would be to boot the Live CD disc image from virtualbox, then do an install for messing around with all Linux goodness safely. Have fun!

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  • "multiple Ubuntu installation in the same hard disk on a different partition from the first Ubuntu installation" is exactly what I am looking for. Although I want it to be minimal and volitile just the same as the LiveCD such that no changes are persisted. That partition shouldn't need to be much bigger than the LiveCD itself. I don't want a full normal install in the second partition.
    – arcyqwerty
    Oct 26, 2014 at 20:14
  • I see. That's easily done. Do a full Ubuntu install on another partition (sized bigger than Live CD to accommodate the temporary changes, e.g. add 1GB if u intend to test software that consume that much for install and other additional files). Then enable Guest session and login using the Guest account whenever you want things to be reset after logging out. More details here: help.ubuntu.com/community/CustomizeGuestSession Oct 27, 2014 at 16:43

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