How to boot XBMC 10.1 ISO on USB via grub?

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Problem :

I am trying to boot the XBMC Live image as an ISO from USB via grub 1.98.

I have a Kubuntu 11.04 image there as well already and it works using the following configuration:

menuentry "Kubuntu 11.04 64bit" {
  loopback loop /boot/iso/kubuntu-11.04-desktop-amd64.iso
  linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/boot/iso/kubuntu-11.04-desktop-amd64.iso noeject noprompt
  initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.gz
}

However, if I try to boot XBMC in an analogue way, I always get an error “Unable to find a medium containing a live file system“.

I found different approaches to install XBMC, but they all are about installing the distribution on USB, or using grub4dos, or unetbootin.

I already found out that XBMC 10.1 is based on Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS, so I tried those settings – even though they are quite similar to Kubuntu 11.04.

Finally, the ISO contains a grub configuration as well in boot/grub/grub.cfg, but even with those parameters, I get the error above.

My current configuration is the following one:

menuentry "xbmc 10.1" {
  loopback loop /boot/iso/xbmc-10.1-live.iso
  linux (loop)/live/vmlinuz video=vesafb boot=live iso-scan/filename=/boot/iso/xbmc-10.1-live.iso xbmc=autostart,nodiskmount splash quiet loglevel=0 persistent quickreboot quickusbmodules notimezone noaccessibility noapparmor noaptcdrom noautologin noxautologin noconsolekeyboard nofastboot nognomepanel nohosts nokpersonalizer nolanguageselector nolocales nonetworking nopowermanagement noprogramcrashes nojockey nosudo noupdatenotifier nouser nopolkitconf noxautoconfig noxscreensaver nopreseed union=aufs
  initrd (loop)/live/initrd.img
}

Any more ideas or any more information I should supply?

Solution :

You need to tell the boot loader where the XBMC live file system is located. The live folder should contain files like filesystem.squashfs, filesystem.size and filesystem.packages. Once you’ve found that folder, add the following argument to your boot configuration:

live-media-path={absolute folder path}

In my case, the line of code read like this:

kernel /XBMC/live/vmlinuz {blah blah more code blah} live-media-path=/XBMC/live

append initrd=/XBMC/live/initrd.img

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