8:40 a.m.
I love the speed of the USB installer from the Live CD...!
But I would also like to stop using so many DVDs for, well everything.
USB drives are much more convenient, portable, durable, and reusable.
My ideal scenario would be able to put the DVD installer ISO onto a
bootable USB stick as well - specifically for the portability USB drives
give over DVDs, and also because USB sticks are basically a lot faster
and easily re-used once I'm done with the install. I mean, do you use
the install DVD for anything else once you've done the install?
Again - this would not be a Live image. It would be the DVD installer
itself running from a USB drive for the specific purpose of doing
exactly what the DVD installer does now.
I've tried to figure out how to do this a couple of releases back, was
unsuccessful after about 30 minutes - OK, so I gave up pretty fast.. :)
- and went back to just burning the DVD. But I'm still interested in
having this as an option and I'd bet I'm not alone.
Anyone have a how-to/magic incantation to do this? Could we eventually
make this an option for Fedora installers too?
Cheers,
Chris
--
====================================================
"The most effective way to do it is to do it."
--Amelia Earhart, American Aviation Pioneer
5:28 p.m.
New subject: DVD Installer on USB...? (Solved)
Christopher A. Williams wrote:
In the meantime, I'm happy to create a BZ requesting that support
be
added for the install media. Frankly, it's rather short-sighted that
it's apparently not.
I tried[1] before F13 was released, but I didn't have the time, nor was
anyone else motivated, to have it done.
[1] http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2010-March/089405.html
5:21 p.m.
New subject: DVD Installer on USB...? (Solved)
On Tue, 2010-06-01 at 17:02 -0500, Michael Cronenworth wrote:
Christopher A. Williams wrote:
> Wish we could clean up this doc so things are more easily understood.
The livecd tools officially support ONLY live media. Yes, the tools have
explicit support for DVD media, but it is not supported.
...Hunh? This statement is as confusing as the doc I'm saying needs
cleaning up. Either you support the DVD or you don't.
If by this you mean that you only support Live ISOs, be they CD or DVD,
but not install ISOs, then fine. It still works.
I would also then request that you update the doc to say that doing this
with the install media is currently not supported, but people have been
known to get it to work, and YMMV.
In the meantime, I'm happy to create a BZ requesting that support be
added for the install media. Frankly, it's rather short-sighted that
it's apparently not.
Cheers,
Chris
--
--
======================
"Only two things are infinite,
the universe and human stupidity,
and I'm not sure about the former."
-- Albert Einstein
1:36 a.m.
On Mon, 2010-05-31 at 10:01 -0600, Christopher A. Williams wrote:
It says a straight forward dd command will create one.
Unfortunately, while the dd command does appear to work and you can
browse the contents of the USB drive afterwards, the USB drive is
still NOT bootable.
I'm not sure you said what you dd'd over to the USB drive. The ISO
file? A copy of bootable already installed hard drive? Something else?
--
[tim@localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686
Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I
read messages from the public lists.
7:40 p.m.
On Monday, 31 May, 2010 @ 17:28 zulu,
David García Granda scribed:
Maybe it's confusing, and it looks like link above mixes things
up
when talking about labels, but what it worked for me (pasted from
my bash history):
su -c 'yum -y install livecd-tools'
su -c 'livecd-iso-to-disk --format --reset-mbr
/home/david/Fedora-13-x86_64-DVD.iso /dev/sdc1'
If you unwrap that second command and you still can't get it to work,
I suggest using the Fedora LiveUSB Creator GUI tool... there's one for
windows too. https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/
This advice may sound strange as you specifically said you don't
want to create a 'Live' disk, but I know this works becaused I've made
bootable 4GB USB installers from both i386 and x86_64 fc12 iso's.
The 2-step method I used was
1) run the LiveUSB Creator using the DVD image as the source
2) delete the /packages and /repodata subdirectories from the USB
stick, then copy the whole ISO to the root of the USB stick.
For the 64-bit version it required a semi-step of opening the
ISO file and deleting a few language files from the OpenOffice
package, saving the ISO to a new name so it would fit on the
USB stick, THEN copying it to the root of the USB stick. I
haven't made one for fc13 yet, so don't know if that's necessary.
Check for bootability with QEMU:
# mount
to find where the USB stick mounted from (assuming autofs
is installed), then, presuming it mounted from /dev/sdf, run
# umount /dev/sdf1
to unmount it, then
# qemu -hda /dev/sdf -m 256 -vga std
again, match the /dev/sd? part
If it boots properly using QEMU but won't boot your computer,
almost certainly the USB port is not configured correctly to be
bootable (e.g. in the computer's BIOS).
After it boots and you choose an install option from the
syslinux.cfg menu, it will ask you the location of the image
file and prompt you to choose its location from a list... it
shouldn't be hard to figure out which one is the USB stick.
12:28 p.m.
Hi,
> documentation does not work.
Actually it worked for me:
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/13/html/Installation_Guide/Mak...
I didn't success either with the dd command, but going to "3.2.2.1.2.
Making Fedora USB Media with livecd-tools" section in link above did
the trick.
> > I was convinced I'd actually done this, but my memory
must be faulty.
> >
>
> I think it may be helpful to follow the advice of mcloaked earlier in
> the thread ... he explains how to make a bootable usb that works - and
> then put the dvd as a hard drive install on the mem stick - and then the
> gotcha's even ..
I will probably try this next.
...But frankly, this means the amount of effort involved is high enough
that the time it takes to just burn a DVD to do the same thing makes
things awash at best and likely in favor of just burning the DVD.
So, it will be good for making something work if you have to.
Wonder if we can take the process and script it or just add it to the
existing tools as another option. Perhaps for F14...? In any case, the
current situation means we have an error in the documentation that
should probably be fixed.
Maybe it's confusing, and it looks like link above mixes things up
when talking about labels, but what it worked for me (pasted from my
bash history):
su -c 'yum -y install livecd-tools'
su -c 'livecd-iso-to-disk --format --reset-mbr
/home/david/Fedora-13-x86_64-DVD.iso /dev/sdc1'
HTH,
David
10:26 a.m.
On Sun, May 30, 2010 at 2:40 PM, Christopher A. Williams
<chriswfedora(a)cawllc.com> wrote:
I love the speed of the USB installer from the Live CD...!
But I would also like to stop using so many DVDs for, well everything.
USB drives are much more convenient, portable, durable, and reusable.
My ideal scenario would be able to put the DVD installer ISO onto a
bootable USB stick as well - specifically for the portability USB drives
give over DVDs, and also because USB sticks are basically a lot faster
and easily re-used once I'm done with the install. I mean, do you use
the install DVD for anything else once you've done the install?
Again - this would not be a Live image. It would be the DVD installer
itself running from a USB drive for the specific purpose of doing
exactly what the DVD installer does now.
I've tried to figure out how to do this a couple of releases back, was
unsuccessful after about 30 minutes - OK, so I gave up pretty fast.. :)
- and went back to just burning the DVD. But I'm still interested in
having this as an option and I'd bet I'm not alone.
Anyone have a how-to/magic incantation to do this? Could we eventually
make this an option for Fedora installers too?
I have done so in the past - basically what you need to do is make a
bootable usbkey and then put the netinst.iso on it via one of the
advertised techniques from the Fedora wiki - or using unetbootin. On
the same key in the root directory you put the DVD iso file as well as
the images directory from that same file. (I don't know if the images
directory is still needed for f13 but perhaps someone knowledgable
will chime in here? It won't do any harm having it there anyway!)
Then once netinst.iso has been booted you can select a hard drive
install, and then navigate to the top directory of the key. This
should then be exactly like a normal hard drive install with one
potential gotcha - that is when the grub installation section is
reached, the default (unless this is changed in f13 or f12) is to
place grub on the MBR of the usbkey as the default. At this point you
*must* make sure that you select the MBR on the drive that you are
installing on, instead of the key otherwise when you complete the
install and remove the key then your shiny new installation won't
boot!
Other than that I did this for F10 and F11 without major issues.
Of course if you already have Fedora running then you can place the
DVD iso on your hard drive, and copy out the images directory by loop
mounting it, and placing it in the same directory as the iso. Then
also copy out vmlinux and initrd.img to /boot naming them say
F13.install and F13.install.img respectively and then adding a grub
stanza to /boot/grub/grub.conf to point the kernel line and next line
to these two files, and name the stanza something like F13-install -
then when you next boot you can select this grub entry and initiate
your install using a hard drive method and point to the DVD iso on
your hard drive. This will only work if the iso and images directory
are on a partition that will not be formatted during the install.
This is in fact the way I usually do my installs to the N+1 version on
any machine.
--
mike c
noon
On Mon, 2010-05-31 at 12:48 -0400, Genes MailLists wrote:
On 05/31/2010 12:20 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
documentation does not work.
>
> I was convinced I'd actually done this, but my memory must be faulty.
>
I think it may be helpful to follow the advice of mcloaked earlier in
the thread ... he explains how to make a bootable usb that works - and
then put the dvd as a hard drive install on the mem stick - and then the
gotcha's even ..
I will probably try this next.
...But frankly, this means the amount of effort involved is high enough
that the time it takes to just burn a DVD to do the same thing makes
things awash at best and likely in favor of just burning the DVD.
So, it will be good for making something work if you have to.
Wonder if we can take the process and script it or just add it to the
existing tools as another option. Perhaps for F14...? In any case, the
current situation means we have an error in the documentation that
should probably be fixed.
Cheers,
Chris
--
=========================================
"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice there is."
--Yogi Berra
11:48 a.m.
On 05/31/2010 12:20 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
documentation does not work.
I was convinced I'd actually done this, but my memory must be faulty.
I think it may be helpful to follow the advice of mcloaked earlier in
the thread ... he explains how to make a bootable usb that works - and
then put the dvd as a hard drive install on the mem stick - and then the
gotcha's even ..
11:20 a.m.
On Mon, 2010-05-31 at 10:01 -0600, Christopher A. Williams wrote:
On Sun, 2010-05-30 at 11:39 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> On Sun, 2010-05-30 at 07:40 -0600, Christopher A. Williams wrote:
> > Anyone have a how-to/magic incantation to do this? Could we eventually
> > make this an option for Fedora installers too?
>
> IIRC the Installation doc has a section on this.
I checked it out. It says a straight forward dd command will create one.
Unfortunately, while the dd command does appear to work and you can
browse the contents of the USB drive afterwards, the USB drive is still
NOT bootable.
So, in fact, using dd to create this using the instructions in the
documentation does not work.
I was convinced I'd actually done this, but my memory must be faulty.
However what you can do is create a Boot CD (download boot.iso) and then
install using the pendrive as installation media (created using dd as
above). I guess you could even create a Boot USB drive and a (separate)
Installation pendrive on two USB ports. Or try partitioning the
pendrive, installing the boot.iso file on the first partition (e.g.
using Live-CD Creator) and putting the distro DVD on the other.
poc
11:01 a.m.
On Sun, 2010-05-30 at 11:39 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
On Sun, 2010-05-30 at 07:40 -0600, Christopher A. Williams wrote:
> Anyone have a how-to/magic incantation to do this? Could we eventually
> make this an option for Fedora installers too?
IIRC the Installation doc has a section on this.
I checked it out. It says a straight forward dd command will create one.
Unfortunately, while the dd command does appear to work and you can
browse the contents of the USB drive afterwards, the USB drive is still
NOT bootable.
So, in fact, using dd to create this using the instructions in the
documentation does not work.
Any other ideas?
--
=============================
"You see things as they are and ask, 'Why?'
I dream things as they never were and ask, 'Why not?'"
-- George Bernard Shaw
10:22 a.m.
Have you tried just dd'ing the iso to de usb-disk? I know that works
for live-cds, so it might work for the installer dvd as well (I
haven't tried)
Good luck!
2010/5/30, Christopher A. Williams <chriswfedora(a)cawllc.com>:
I love the speed of the USB installer from the Live CD...!
But I would also like to stop using so many DVDs for, well everything.
USB drives are much more convenient, portable, durable, and reusable.
My ideal scenario would be able to put the DVD installer ISO onto a
bootable USB stick as well - specifically for the portability USB drives
give over DVDs, and also because USB sticks are basically a lot faster
and easily re-used once I'm done with the install. I mean, do you use
the install DVD for anything else once you've done the install?
Again - this would not be a Live image. It would be the DVD installer
itself running from a USB drive for the specific purpose of doing
exactly what the DVD installer does now.
I've tried to figure out how to do this a couple of releases back, was
unsuccessful after about 30 minutes - OK, so I gave up pretty fast.. :)
- and went back to just burning the DVD. But I'm still interested in
having this as an option and I'd bet I'm not alone.
Anyone have a how-to/magic incantation to do this? Could we eventually
make this an option for Fedora installers too?
Cheers,
Chris
--
====================================================
"The most effective way to do it is to do it."
--Amelia Earhart, American Aviation Pioneer
--
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4:57 p.m.
New subject: DVD Installer on USB...? (Solved)
On Tue, 2010-06-01 at 16:06 +0930, Tim wrote:
On Mon, 2010-05-31 at 10:01 -0600, Christopher A. Williams wrote:
> It says a straight forward dd command will create one.
>
> Unfortunately, while the dd command does appear to work and you can
> browse the contents of the USB drive afterwards, the USB drive is
> still NOT bootable.
I'm not sure you said what you dd'd over to the USB drive. The ISO
file? A copy of bootable already installed hard drive? Something else?
Actually, I was able to get this working based on a post from David
García Granda.
Indeed, what I _was_ doing was to dd the DVD ISO directly to the USB
drive:
dd if=<path to DVD ISO>/Fedora-13-x86_64-DVD.iso of=/dev/sdc1
This does not work.
I can verify that what does work is (assuming you have installed the
live cd tools package):
livecd-iso-to-disk --format --reset-mbr <path to DVD
ISO>/Fedora-13-x86_64-DVD.iso /dev/sdc1
Note that my examples assume the USB stick is found at /dev/sdc1.
The instructions are misleading, but the URL is:
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/13/html/Installation_Guide/Mak...
Refer to section 3.2.2.1.2 and ignore the fact that it says this works
with the Live ISOs only. It works with both.
Wish we could clean up this doc so things are more easily understood.
I'm still installing on my other system so it's taking me longer to
reply. I'd bet that you could get the live-usb tool to do this too if it
didn't check the source ISO to make sure it is a Live CD ISO.
Unfortunately, it appears to make this check so the only way to do this
right now is via the command line.
Thanks to David for helping me figure this out!
Cheers,
Chris
--
--
======================
"Only two things are infinite,
the universe and human stupidity,
and I'm not sure about the former."
-- Albert Einstein
12:17 a.m.
New subject: DVD Installer on USB...? (Solved)
On Tue, Jun 01, 2010 at 15:57:08 -0600,
"Christopher A. Williams" <chriswfedora(a)cawllc.com> wrote:
dd if=<path to DVD ISO>/Fedora-13-x86_64-DVD.iso of=/dev/sdc1
This does not work.
I wouldn't expect it to. You would need to copy it to /dev/sdc so that
the MBR and partition table get overwritten. I don't know that that will
make it work, but surely what you were doing won't work.
5086
days inactive
5089
days old
15 comments
10 participants
participants (10)
-
Bruno Wolff III -
Christopher A Williams -
Darr -
David García Granda -
Genes MailLists -
Michael Cronenworth -
mike cloaked -
Patrick O'Callaghan -
stefan riemens -
Tim