If you want to boot backtrack4 from time to time on your Linux desktop/laptop but don’t want to carry it on a USB drive (or CDROM) on you then this guide may help.

I am using Debian unstable on my laptop but I am sure you can adapt it to anything you want. I am using another partition (/dev/sda6) as my backtrack partition but it’s possible to copy the full thing in / as well on your main partition.

Download backtrack4 from backtrack website :

http://www.backtrack-linux.org/downloads/

  • mount the iso image locally :

sudo mount -o loop bt4-final.iso /mnt

  • copy the content of the iso to the root of the chosen partition (mounted in /media/part6 for me) :

cd /mnt;sudo rsync –progress -avu * /media/part6/

  • Configure grub :

sudo su -
cat < /etc/grub.d/50_Backtrack
#!/bin/sh
exec tail -n +3 $0
menuentry “Backtrack” {
linux (hd0,6)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT=casper boot=casper nopersistent rw quiet vga=0x317
initrd (hd0,6)/boot/initrd.gz
}
EOF
chmod +x /etc/grub.d/50_Backtrack

  • Update grub

sudo update-grub

And you should be able to boot the Backtrack menu, make sure this point to the right partition for me it’s (hd0,6) because my backtrack copied CD is on /dev/sda6 but your mileage may differ.