Boot Linux ISOs?

[YZgitter]

Is CSMwrap supposed to work for booting Linux ISOs that don't support UEFI?

I tried adding csmwrap (as bootx64.efi) in /EFI/Boot/ on a Tiny Core Linux ISO extracted to USB.
This is the result (I only tried in a VM for now):

[FlyGoat]

What's your vm? Is it QEMU?

Seems like CDROM's El-Torito record is broken.

[Gelip]

@FlyGoat
No, this is no El-Torito problem - I have exactly same errors on real machine when try boot anything.
Version 1.2.0 is bad 👎

Best version CSMWrap for now is AHCI patched efafa75-CSMWrap-34ee5ec :
https://github.com/FlyGoat/csmwrap/actions/runs/15173994519

[FlyGoat]

I see, I was planning to release next version after getting boot priority functionality ready but maybe better to release 1.2.1 immediately to include those fixes.

[YZgitter]

I'm using VMware Workstation on Windows 10.

I tried with csmwrap 1.2.1 now. I get to choose the USB drive where the ISO is extracted, but then it doesn't load the OS:

If I set the FAT32 partition on the USB as active the error is different:

So far I tried with Tiny Core Linux (Core-current.iso) and a couple of old (Linux based) memtest ISOs.

I guess it could be a VM specific issue, but I never had any issues booting UEFI Linux ISOs the same way.

[YZgitter]

I got the same results on hardware, but I think I made a mistake. I was only extracting the ISOs to USB with no modification (besides adding the EFI folder with csmwrap).
It looks like the 'extract-only' method only works for booting UEFI-bootable ISOs, not for legacy ISOs.

After using Rufus to "convert" the ISO to a USB and adding csmwrap, the USB boots just fine! (even with 1.2.0)

Also, I was hoping to create UEFI-bootable ISOs and boot them from a Ventoy drive, but I guess that's not possible with the way csmwrap works.

[FlyGoat]

I don't know much about Ventoy so can't comment on this topic.
I'm glad to know you managed to get it to work.