installationiso
I've mounted the ISO file using a virtual drive application. When I open the virtual drive with the Ubuntu ISO mounted, I only have the option of restarting to be able to do anything. However, I couldn't boot from the ISO after restarting.
Is it possible to boot from a mounted ISO file from the first place? Or do I have to burn the image and boot from the physical CD?
I would venture to say you are overcomplicating things! You only need to mount the iso in the virtual machine.
Under IDE Controller There should be an icon that shows a CD with a + sign on it, to create a new disc drive as shown highlighted in yellow color in the below snapshot:
A box will come up, click Choose Disk
.isoShould boot into the iso like it's in the disc drive.
To make an ISO from files on your hard drive, you can use the mkisofs command. To use it, just press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open Terminal. When it opens, run the command(s) below:
mkisofs -o /home/user/Desktop/test/Ubuntu.iso /home/user/Desktop/test
(Using the command above, I have a folder called test in the Desktop folder, which will create the ISO in the same test folder, using only the files in the test folder).
Once created, then you can burn it to a DVD.
Note: This will not create a bootable DVD. To create a bootable DVD you need to get ISOLINUX, and you still can use mkisofs.
Best Answer
When you mount an ISO image as a virtual disk, this happens at the OS level. Not at the hardware level. When your running operating system stops, the virtual device goes away. So no, it is not possible to boot a physical machine from a virtual drive.
Whether or not you need to create physical installation media depends on how you want to install Ubuntu:
If you want Ubuntu installed separately from Windows--either alongside it or replacing it--then you need to create real physical installation media. You can burn the ISO image to a DVD (or to a CD, if you're installing Ubuntu 12.04 or earlier). Or you can write it to a USB flash drive.
If you want to install Ubuntu inside Windows with Wubi (so that it is contained within the pre-existing Windows partition and booted using the Windows boot loader), then you do not need to create physical installation media:
wubi.exeon the virtual disk. This will install a Wubi Ubuntu system.wubi.exe(you can download it here) in the same folder as the ISO image, preferably with no other files. Make sure you use the right version ofwubi.exe--it must be for the same version of Ubuntu as the ISO image itself. Then just runwubi.exe, and it will automatically detect and use the contents of the ISO image.If you are doing one of these things and it is not working, then: