24.5 Invoking grub-mkrescue

The program grub-mkrescue generates a bootable GRUB rescue image (see Making a GRUB bootable CD-ROM).

grub-mkrescue -o grub.iso

All arguments not explicitly listed as grub-mkrescue options are passed on directly to xorriso in mkisofs emulation mode. Options passed to xorriso will normally be interpreted as mkisofs options; if the option ‘--’ is used, then anything after that will be interpreted as native xorriso options.

Non-option arguments specify additional source directories. This is commonly used to add extra files to the image:

mkdir -p disk/boot/grub
(add extra files to disk/boot/grub)
grub-mkrescue -o grub.iso disk

grub-mkrescue accepts the following options:

--help

Print a summary of the command-line options and exit.

--version

Print the version number of GRUB and exit.

-o file

--output=file

Save output in file. This "option" is required.

--modules=modules

Pre-load the named GRUB modules in the image. Multiple entries in modules should be separated by whitespace (so you will probably need to quote this for your shell).

--rom-directory=dir

If generating images for the QEMU or Coreboot platforms, copy the resulting qemu.img or coreboot.elf files respectively to the dir directory as well as including them in the image.

--xorriso=file

Use file as the xorriso program, rather than the built-in default.

--grub-mkimage=file

Use file as the grub-mkimage program, rather than the built-in default.