<div dir="ltr">
<p style="margin-bottom:0in">First of all not all flash drives boot
– and even if you get one that does the next lot might not. This
has to do with the firmware between the data on the drive and the USB
interface. Often there is a firmware virtual CD involved.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in">If you look on the drive with such as
gparted you will likely see a bit of “unused” space near the
front of the drive. Sometimes that is where the firmware is and/or
virtual CD and/or optimization data which allows for the best data
transfer performance from the drive is located. Sometimes if you
touch that (such as write over it with dd) the drive will become
unusably slow.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in">I used to use F20 and then F21 for some
special drives. But F22 for me had too much initial “updates” to
make the process practical. It would literally take at least 2/3 of
the day to do the updates mostly, I assume, because the data transfer
became so slow in this process.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in">Most USB making software that I have
run across do overwrite the beginning of the disk often making it
very slow. I like to “shrink” the existing factory partition
from the back of the drive on a 16G I would leave about 500mb of the
original and install the Linux on the freed up space leaving the
front of the drive untouched except for the MBR.
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in">I think something like Clonezilla could
be trained to do the copy process using images and special procedures
to make sure the front of the drive is not touched and that extra
room is left at the back of the drive as even in the same drives lots
tend to be different sizes.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in">Performance of flash drives booting
Linux is likely to be a constant source of frustration especially for
something as complex as Fedora. You will need a drive with good
transfer rates to begin with. A lite version of another Linux might
well be a better choice. Better yet I find that an mSATA drive in a
USB3 converter box has performance good enough to be usable for most
anything. At present I can put a 30G version together for about $50
and a few more will get me 64G.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in">If you need the economy of a flash
drive to make the project work I would recommend other than Fedora or
a perhaps a light version if one exists or can be made. I ended up
giving up on Fedora for my flash drive project due to the crazy large
initial updates process – and - thinking about it as you are I know
I would have to use a very surgically accurate method to copy to the
many drives while preserving the front of the drive and dealing with
all the many sizes of the production runs.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in">Finding a drive that works well will be
your first item I do believe.</p></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 5:07 AM, Martin Bříza <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mbriza@redhat.com" target="_blank">mbriza@redhat.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span class="">On Thu, 12 Nov 2015 12:36:28 +0100, Robert P. J. Day <<a href="mailto:rpjday@crashcourse.ca" target="_blank">rpjday@crashcourse.ca</a>> wrote:<br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<br>
for an upcoming class, i want to create bootable 64-bit fedora 23<br>
systems on (probably) 16G USB drives. given that i want to do this<br>
from a running fedora 23 system, and it can be a totally destructive<br>
creation, what's the best way?<br>
<br>
as i see it, i would probably do a single, initial install onto one<br>
USB drive, then "dd" that image to all the rest. the USB drives need<br>
to be writable, and (obviously) bootable from any system.<br>
<br>
so far, i've found this wiki page:<br>
<br>
<a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_and_use_Live_USB" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_and_use_Live_USB</a><br>
<br>
and am looking at the liveusb-creator package. am i on the right<br>
track?<br>
<br>
rday<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
<br></span>
Hi,<br>
<br>
there's the Fedora LiveUSB Creator tool, you could give that a shot.<br>
It's hosted on [1] and you can get pre-built packages from [2].<br>
If you want the flash drives to still be write-able, don't use the destructive mode and make sure the flash drives are FAT32 formatted.<br>
Feel free to ask anything (even directly) or report any issues/enhancement requests.<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
Martin<br>
<br>
[1] <a href="https://github.com/lmacken/liveusb-creator" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://github.com/lmacken/liveusb-creator</a><br>
[2] <a href="https://copr.fedoraproject.org/coprs/mbriza/liveusb-creator/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://copr.fedoraproject.org/coprs/mbriza/liveusb-creator/</a><div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><br>
-- <br>
users mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:users@lists.fedoraproject.org" target="_blank">users@lists.fedoraproject.org</a><br>
To unsubscribe or change subscription options:<br>
<a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users</a><br>
Fedora Code of Conduct: <a href="http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct</a><br>
Guidelines: <a href="http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines</a><br>
Have a question? Ask away: <a href="http://ask.fedoraproject.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://ask.fedoraproject.org</a><br>
</div></div></blockquote></div><br></div>