Your message dated Mon, 3 Mar 2014 02:05:17 +0100 with message-id <20140303010517.ga18...@mraw.org> and subject line Re: Bug#596335: debian-installer: build ready-to-use hd-media images has caused the Debian Bug report #596335, regarding debian-installer: build ready-to-use hd-media images to be marked as done.
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--- Begin Message ---Package: debian-installer Severity: wishlist Hello, As opposed to the optical disk images, the images that are provided for installing Debian from an hd-media are not directly usable, but need to be manually completed by adding an optical disk image into their filesystem. This requires a more complicated procedure, and make the installation of Debian from an USB key more complicated than from an optical disk, whereas there is no theoretical reason for such a difference. Compare these two typical use cases: (preparing an installation CD) [optional: read the installation manual] [find the URL of the CD image] wget http://url/of/the/cd.iso wodim dev=/dev/cdrom cd.iso (preparing an installation USB drive) [mandatory: read the installation manual] [find the URL of the hd-media image] wget http://url/of/the/hd-media.img.gz [optional: try to write it directly, boot on that, fail] gunzip hd-media.img.gz dd if=hd-media.img of=/dev/stick [optional: try to boot on that, fail] [optional: give up and switch to the CD way] [find the URL a small CD image] wget http://url/of/the/cd.iso mount /dev/stick /mnt cp cd.iso /mnt umount /mnt The installation manual explains that in a non-straightforward way, describing two methods, and giving only hints to find where to download the two needed images. In addition, this procedure depends on *nix tools, and is thus inapplicable for many user that start installing Debian from a foreign system, which is a common case. Because of this complication, I see many beginners failing at preparing installation USB sticks, if not failing to install Debian at all because they do not have an optical drive. It would be useful to build and provide ready-to-use hd-media images, that would be as easy to use as the optical disk ones. I see four ways to implement that: 1. work around: after building the incomplete hd-media image as it is currently done, post-process it to add an optical disk image on its filesystem; 2. hi-tech, space-saving: using the recent hybrid boot feature of SYSLINUX, that allow to build single images that are bootable either as El Torito optical media or as MBR on-optical media, if applicable to the Debian installer: cf. bug #593484; 3. clean: find a way to build autonomous hd-media image, that use data on their file system instead of relying on an optical disk image; 4. minimalistic: build hd-media image that use the netboot process, thus containing only a bootloader, a kernel and an initrd: cd. bug #505773. Regards, -- Tanguy Ortolo -- System Information: Debian Release: squeeze/sid APT prefers stable APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (60, 'testing'), (50, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-bpo.5-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dashsignature.asc
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--- Begin Message ---Tanguy Ortolo <tanguy+deb...@ortolo.eu> (2010-09-10): > As opposed to the optical disk images, the images that are provided for > installing Debian from an hd-media are not directly usable, but need to be > manually completed by adding an optical disk image into their filesystem. The manual has: 4.3.1. Preparing a USB stick using a hybrid CD or DVD image and those images are ready to use, so closing this bug report. Mraw, KiBi.signature.asc
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