On Sat, Oct 11, 2003 at 06:41:57PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote: > I am working on making d-i support installs from USB storage. Booting is > dealt with, but there's still the question of how d-i finds the install > media to install additional udebs and/or to get debs from. > > As I thought about this, I realized that once it's mounted, a USB > storage device is essentially just another hard drive, so the design > should also allow for installs where a generic hard drive is used as the > install media. I am also leaning toward getting this to work with any > iso image that has d-i on it, so I don't have to worry about creating my > own isos (or other media) too.
Amen to that. Hard disk access is needed in many cases. > The four scenarios I am envisioning are: > > 1. Download a debian iso to a partition you will not be putting Debian on. > "Boot" via a batch file that runs linux. May only work on more > antique versions of DOS. This also works on powerpc, using yaboot manually from OpenFirmware. > 2. Same as #1 except create a floppy image and boot from it. > 3. Put a debian iso on a USB storage device, and boot from it[0]. Or just installer files, not in iso format. > 4. Boot from a floppy which then detects your USB storage device. > > In all cases the d-i initrd that is loaded contains drivers for hard > disks and usb storage, as well as a udeb (provisionally called > hd-media-detect) that tries to mount each hard drive and partition in > turn, and looks for iso files on them[1]. Once the d-i iso is found, it > loop mounts it to /cdrom, and the rest of the install proceeds more or > less as normal, using the cdrom-retreiver to pull files from it, > possibly using a modified version of cdrom-checker to validate it first. Sounds good. > The only caveat during the install is that it will need to avoid letting > the user partition the drive from which the iso is loop mounted, or > format the partition the iso is in. This may call for some changes in > the partitioner and formating modules. Well, if the iso is dd'd to the partition, it is read-only and has no space available. Not sure if that's the way you want to do it though. -- Debian GNU/Linux Operating System By the People, For the People Chris Tillman (a people instance) toff one at cox dot net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
