"Frans Pop" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message >2) Problem with these small USB images and the way they are written is >that anything already on the USB stick gets deleted and that - given that >most USB sticks nowadays are significantly larger in size - makes most of >the stick completely unusable. Same goes for hd-media. > >If someone could come up with some solution to these problems, that would >be great. My suggestion is to separate the concept of making the USB stick bootable from the concept of providing a d-i to boot. Any USB stick only needs to be made bootable once, by installing GRUB or similar. Once it is bootable, the user can add as many boot images as s/he likes, and may want to change/update them frequently - e.g. if testing new d-i releases.
So provide a set of instructions (and a GRUB download, if you like) for helping people make their USB sticks bootable. (Remind them that some older systems only boot if the stick is in the "superfloppy" format, rather than formatted as a hard disk.) Separately, provide d-i releases for USB sticks *on the assumption that the stick is bootable*. This should save everyone lots of trouble. Ideally, a d-i for USB boot should give the user a choice between looking for an ISO on the stick, and connecting directly to a repository (netboot). It seems silly to have to keep two d-i images on the stick to achieve this. >One alternative option for the second issue could be to instead create a >tarball with everything in it, including syslinux config and a script the >user can run manually to make the stick bootable (with appropriate >warnings if required commands, possibly checking for availability of >alternative commands, are not available). I would expect such a script to >become "smarter" with time as users provide feedback. Yes - there is no reason that the instructions and download for making the stick bootable cannot be bundled with the d-i download. Just make it clear that they can be safely ignored by those whose stick is already bootable. Regards, CC This e-mail may contain information which is confidential, legally privileged and/or copyright protected. This e-mail is intended for the addressee only. If you receive this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from your computer -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
