As a relative noob (only been into Linux for about 1 year - and a lot of what you guys talk about goes over my head), I would just like to add that with my 4GB usb2 stick it does seem to take a disproportionaly long time to copy the boot image files from the livecd iso file to the stick. This might be because it is filling the rest of the drive with 0's as you suggest.Still damn cool though!Russ.> Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 06:07:37 -0500> From: dmc.fedora(a)filteredperception.org> To: fedora-livecd-list(a)redhat.com> Subject: [Fedora-livecd-list] RFC- improving livecd installer efficiency> > Question: Does the current livecd installer inefficiently write lots of 0's to > the destination drive that it doesn't need to?> > I think it might. The os.img on the F7 livecd is a 4G sparse file with about > 2.3G of data. Anaconda's livecdcopy backend uses python's os.read/write. I > would guess that that means that 4G of data is getting written, when > theoretically only 2.3G needs to.> > The solution that comes to mind is this-> > in livecd-tools, create the os.img as a 7G (or 700G??) sparse file. Basically > just way big. Then take care to make the ext3fs be the exact correct size for > the data (i.e. 2.3G). Then, in the initramfs, just after mounting it (after > snapshotting it), do a resize2fs to 7G (or 700G).> > Then when anaconda does the copy, only copy the first 2.3G of the sparse file.> > It is however late in the 'day' for me, so maybe someone can chime in with > confirmation or refutation of my logic here.> > -dmc> > --> Fedora-livecd-list mailing list> Fedora-livecd-list(a)redhat.com> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-livecd-list _________________________________________________________________ Make every IM count. Download Windows Live Messenger and join the i’m Initiative now. It’s free.  http://im.live.com/messenger/im/home/?source=TAGWL_June07