Boot from an ISO-File?

[David A. Cobb]

The object: testing downloaded Linux (Ubuntu 11.04-pre) install media, 
avoiding burning more coasters.

From the documentation, I see that from the command line I can "mount" 
an ISO file image as a device, e.g. loopback loop 
(hda0,1)/iso/xubuntu-11.04-a3.iso

It would seem logical that I could then boot from that "device."  Disks 
burned from these images are bootable -- whatever that requires.  
Annoyingly, they all then fail to mount the filesystem.squashfs that 
contains the Linux content.  IIRC, the image uses LOADLIN to boot, 
perhaps indicating that this would require chain-loading; however, if I 
examine the files contained in the image, I see that it also contains a 
/boot/grub/grub.cfg file.

Installation would seem to be worlds quicker if I could leave the 
relatively slow CD access out of the equation -- and even more 
convenient if I could at least test that the image would not fail like 
all its predecessors.

THANKS IN ADVANCE!

--
David A. Cobb -- computing t-rex