On 10/29/18 11:31 AM, Danishka Navin wrote: > Hi, > I have to prepare hundreds of USB sticks which need to either papre as a > liveUSB or make it as a installed system (using the USB as the storage > when installing fedora). You can install to a USB stick if you want. Generally, Linux running on any sort of a USB drive is quite slow, so keep that in mind.

You could then clone the USB stick to other USB sticks via "dd" using the raw, block devices. Assuming /dev/sdb is the drive you installed to and /dev/sdc is the intended target: dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sdc bs=4k,sync You could also make an image of the stick on hard drive using dd: dd if=/dev/sdb of=/somefilename.img bs=4k,sync

then, if you have multiple USB ports (or a big hub), you could run parallel "dd"s specifying different sticks as targets: screen 'dd if=/somefilename.img of=/dev/sdc bs=4k,sync' screen 'dd if=/somefilename.img of=/dev/sdd bs=4k,sync' ... screen 'dd if=/somefilename.img of=/dev/sdX bs=4k,sync' which would run all of the dd commands in parallel screen sessions. Sort of a poor man's bulk disk duplicator. I'd highly recommend that you use USB3 if possible if you're feeding a hub to minimize the I/O contention you'll get. You could do something similar if all you wanted to do was put the LiveUSB ISO image on the sticks (replace "/somefilename.img" with the path to the ISO image you're interested in). Be aware that generally writing to USB can be a pokey process (especially if everything's on the same USB host port, USB3 or not), but you get the general idea.

On 10/29/18 9:40 PM, Danishka Navin wrote: > Hi Rick, > > Thanks for your quick response. > > On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 1:26 AM Rick Stevens <ricks(a)alldigital.com > <mailto:ricks@alldigital.com>> wrote: > > On 10/29/18 11:31 AM, Danishka Navin wrote: > > Hi, > > I have to prepare hundreds of USB sticks which need to either > papre as a > > liveUSB or make it as a installed system (using the USB as the storage > > when installing fedora). > > You can install to a USB stick if you want. Generally, Linux running on > any sort of a USB drive is quite slow, so keep that in mind. > > > Yes, I know but this is to avoid misconfiguration of over 1000 servers > across the country within a small window with less technical people in > remote areas. Using this method, they'd have a running system by booting the USB stick, but it'd be very slow as everything would run off the USB stick. Also remember that there's a limited number of write cycles you can do to FLASH drives, which would limit the lifespan of the system. While it might take a bit more time for you to craft, you might actually be better off in building a USB stick that has both the installable image and a kickstart file in it that would do a full, automated install to their local hard drive. That's what kickstart is intended to do. Once you have that USB stick (installable image and the kickstart file), you can duplicate that onto multiple sticks using the image method. > You could then clone the USB stick to other USB sticks via "dd" using > the raw, block devices. Assuming /dev/sdb is the drive you installed to > and /dev/sdc is the intended target: > > dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sdc bs=4k,sync > > You could also make an image of the stick on hard drive using dd: > > dd if=/dev/sdb of=/somefilename.img bs=4k,sync > > > this means once installed ISO in to USB (completion of anaconda and post > installation) create an .img ? Once a running system is on the USB stick and is bootable, you'd create an image (.img). I use .img to differentiate between an ISO and a running system. An ISO image (.iso) is essentially an image of a CD or DVD and has a specific format as to file naming limits and the like and BIOS/UEFI firmware know how to boot an CD/DVD and a .iso file emulates that. Using the .img, things would run off the USB stick, with the slow I/O and potentially limited lifespan issues I mentioned above. If we're about the kickstart mechanism, you'd create a USB stick that contains the ISO image of the installable system and your kickstart file. You'd make an image of that stick, then duplicate it to multiple sticks. Send the sticks out, give instructions for the proper way to run the kickstart (it's not that difficult, just some extra typing they need to do at the boot prompt), then let the USB stick and kickstart install the system to their local hard drive. No lifespan issues and fast disk I/O. As I said, you'll have to craft the kickstart file yourself, but it's not really that hard. Google "install via kickstart" and you'll see what's involved.

- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital ricks(a)alldigital.com - - AIM/Skype: therps2 ICQ: 226437340 Yahoo: origrps2 - - - - When in doubt, mumble. - ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ users mailing list -- users(a)lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave(a)lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/users@lists.fedoraproject.org

I have to prepare hundreds of USB sticks which need to either papre as a liveUSB or make it as a installed system (using the USB as the storage when installing fedora).