Here are a few tips for handling ISO images. It occurred to me during the Berkeley Global Jam yesterday that I hadn't shared these tips yet.
Testdrive https://launchpad.net/testdrive is a more automated way of downloading and setting up virtual machines for testing pre-release versions of Ubuntu. By default it uses KVM but can also use Virtualbox. I've used it's default file locations to make my other tips compatible, using the same ISO images. When I want to update a desktop 32 bit or 64 bit ISO daily build image I run some simple bash aliases I store in ~/.bash_aliases that get sourced by .bashrc. These can be modified to use zsync (client side rsync) or to download other images. To use them just type "syncnatty;syncnatty64" and they will be run in sequence. The rsync and zsync download methods only download changes to the ISO file since the last time you downloaded it. alias syncnatty='rsync -azP rsync://cdimage.ubuntu.com/cdimage/daily-live/current/natty-desktop-i386.iso $HOME/.cache/testdrive/natty-desktop-i386.iso' alias syncnatty64='rsync -azP rsync://cdimage.ubuntu.com/cdimage/daily-live/current/natty-desktop-amd64.iso $HOME/.cache/testdrive/natty-desktop-amd64.iso' The next tip is setting grub2 to boot my machine from those ISO images without needing to write them to a USB stick or burn them to CDs. In the file /etc/grub.d/40_custom I wrote customized entries (thanks again to http://rww.name/articles/grub2iso.html ) to boot them. You will need to modify these to use your username instead of "grantbow" below. I believe the acpi=off is something my hardware needs and may not be required. menuentry "ubuntu-11.04-desktop-i386 iso" { loopback loop /home/grantbow/.cache/testdrive/natty-desktop-i386.iso linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/home/grantbow/.cache/testdrive/natty-desktop-i386.iso noreject noprompt acpi=off -- initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz } menuentry "ubuntu-11.04-desktop-amd64 iso" { loopback loop /home/grantbow/.cache/testdrive/natty-desktop-amd64.iso linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/home/grantbow/.cache/testdrive/natty-desktop-amd64.iso noreject noprompt acpi=off -- initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz } These tips cover testing in virtual machines or on the hardware directly making running the latest version more accessible without requiring a full install. I hope others find these tips helpful. Cheers, Grant -- Ubuntu-us-ca mailing list [email protected] Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-us-ca
