Fedora on usb connected media

[Joerg Lechner]

Hi,
I am using Fedora since a very long time privately, I have started with Redhat, when
Fedora came up I switched to Fedora. I use always two systems Windows and Fedora quasi
paralell. This means if in a function Windows is better Windows, if Fedora is better
Fedora. Partly I had 2 disks in the system one for Windows, one for Fedora. But since I
work with laptops I use Fedora on USB connected media, currently Fedora on a 64GB usb 3.0
connected flash medium. Fedora is in this configuration -as I feel- quite quick, as it
would be on the internal disk. As mass storage I use the laptop internal Windows disk. I
saw that data transfering from the Laptop internal disk to an external disk and vice versa
is much more quicker, when it's controlled from Fedora on usb flash medium, then it
is, when controlled from the laptop internal disk, there are many examples where fedora is
comparable ( or better) as the Apps of Windows.

Since development of F24 I have problems with testing in my small corner "Fedora
paralell to Windows on usb connected media". In F24 there was no dual boot Windows -
Fedora possible  - requirement for Final, this had worked always in the previous
"editions" of Fedora. Now in F25 it is not possible to install F25 Alpha on an
usb connected medium - not on an usb flash medium, not on an external disk. I filed a bug
against dracut - dracut showed the error, possibly I should have filed against Anaconda  
- nearly no reaction on this bug - was not worth the invested work.

It might be, that Fedora is mainly used on bigger systems, and not so important for
smaller systems, but also on smaller systems there are people, who could learn to love
Fedora, if there is more promotion for this part of the computer community. Especially
Windows oriented users.
Kind regards

[Adam Williamson]

On Fri, 2016-09-30 at 02:46 -0400, Joerg Lechner wrote:
>  Hi,
>  I am using Fedora since a very long time privately, I have started with Redhat, when
> Fedora came up I switched to Fedora. I use always two systems Windows and Fedora quasi
> paralell. This means if in a function Windows is better Windows, if Fedora is better
> Fedora. Partly I had 2 disks in the system one for Windows, one for Fedora. But since I
> work with laptops I use Fedora on USB connected media, currently Fedora on a 64GB usb 3.0
> connected flash medium. Fedora is in this configuration -as I feel- quite quick, as it
> would be on the internal disk. As mass storage I use the laptop internal Windows disk. I
> saw that data transfering from the Laptop internal disk to an external disk and vice versa
> is much more quicker, when it's controlled from Fedora on usb flash medium, then it
> is, when controlled from the laptop internal disk, there are many examples where fedora is
> comparable ( or better) as the Apps of Windows.
>  
>  Since development of F24 I have problems with testing in my small
>  corner "Fedora paralell to Windows on usb connected media". In F24
>  there was no dual boot Windows - Fedora possible  - requirement for
>  Final, this had worked always in the previous "editions" of Fedora.
>  Now in F25 it is not possible to install F25 Alpha on an usb
>  connected medium - not on an usb flash medium, not on an external
>  disk. I filed a bug against dracut - dracut showed the error,
>  possibly I should have filed against Anaconda   - nearly no reaction
>  on this bug - was not worth the invested work.
>  
>  It might be, that Fedora is mainly used on bigger systems, and not so
>  important for smaller systems, but also on smaller systems there are
>  people, who could learn to love Fedora, if there is more promotion
>  for this part of the computer community. Especially Windows oriented
>  users. 
In general, yes, permanent installs to removable media just aren't
really a priority for development or testing. I've had your bug open
for a couple of weeks, intending to test it out locally if I get a
chance, but there's just always been something more important. I'll
still try and get to it.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
http://www.happyassassin.net

[Chris Murphy]

On Fri, Sep 30, 2016 at 1:02 AM, Adam Williamson
<adamwill(a)fedoraproject.org&gt; wrote:
>  On Fri, 2016-09-30 at 02:46 -0400, Joerg Lechner wrote:
> > Hi,
> > I am using Fedora since a very long time privately, I have started with Redhat, when
> Fedora came up I switched to Fedora. I use always two systems Windows and Fedora quasi
> paralell. This means if in a function Windows is better Windows, if Fedora is better
> Fedora. Partly I had 2 disks in the system one for Windows, one for Fedora. But since I
> work with laptops I use Fedora on USB connected media, currently Fedora on a 64GB usb 3.0
> connected flash medium. Fedora is in this configuration -as I feel- quite quick, as it
> would be on the internal disk. As mass storage I use the laptop internal Windows disk. I
> saw that data transfering from the Laptop internal disk to an external disk and vice versa
> is much more quicker, when it's controlled from Fedora on usb flash medium, then it
> is, when controlled from the laptop internal disk, there are many examples where fedora is
> comparable ( or better) as the Apps of Windows.
> >
> > Since development of F24 I have problems with testing in my small
> > corner "Fedora paralell to Windows on usb connected media". In F24
> > there was no dual boot Windows - Fedora possible  - requirement for
> > Final, this had worked always in the previous "editions" of Fedora.
> > Now in F25 it is not possible to install F25 Alpha on an usb
> > connected medium - not on an usb flash medium, not on an external
> > disk. I filed a bug against dracut - dracut showed the error,
> > possibly I should have filed against Anaconda   - nearly no reaction
> > on this bug - was not worth the invested work. 
OK but what is the bug ID?


> >
> > It might be, that Fedora is mainly used on bigger systems, and not so
> > important for smaller systems, but also on smaller systems there are
> > people, who could learn to love Fedora, if there is more promotion
> > for this part of the computer community. Especially Windows oriented
> > users.
>
>  In general, yes, permanent installs to removable media just aren't
>  really a priority for development or testing. I've had your bug open
>  for a couple of weeks, intending to test it out locally if I get a
>  chance, but there's just always been something more important. I'll
>  still try and get to it. 
Yeah, it'd be neat to find a way to recruit people who individually
are interested in solving a problem, but have only narrow expertise. A
way to put together a team. Something like a dating app for developers
and projects, haha.


-- 
Chris Murphy

[Viorel Tabara]

On Fri Sep 30 2016 10:39:07 GMT-0600 (MDT) Chris Murphy 
>  OK but what is the bug ID? 
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1371661 

-- 
Viorel

[Richard Ryniker]

Works for me.  I used a Samsung 940X laptop and a Sandisk 80GB USB3
external SSD.

This is a UEFI machine, and I installed using manual partitioning to
re-use partitions on the external device, which contained an old Fedora
23 system.  My purpose here was to preserve an encrypted /home partition.
/boot, /boot/efi, /root and a swap partition were reformatted by the
installer for the F25 system.

In order to boot from the external drive, I must use the EFI boot loader
- press F10 during start to display a list of boot devices, then select
the SanDisk USB drive.

The internal drive for this machine dual boots Fedora 24 and Windows.
Only the external drive was used by Anaconda for the F25 installation.
It might be possible to update GRUB on the internal drive so it can boot
F25 from the external drive, but I rather like the present state where no
change was made to the internal storage medium.

[Chris Murphy]

On Fri, Sep 30, 2016 at 11:07 AM, Richard Ryniker <ryniker(a)alum.mit.edu&gt; wrote:
>  Works for me.  I used a Samsung 940X laptop and a Sandisk 80GB USB3
>  external SSD.
>
>  This is a UEFI machine, and I installed using manual partitioning to
>  re-use partitions on the external device, which contained an old Fedora
>  23 system.  My purpose here was to preserve an encrypted /home partition.
>  /boot, /boot/efi, /root and a swap partition were reformatted by the
>  installer for the F25 system.
>
>  In order to boot from the external drive, I must use the EFI boot loader
>  - press F10 during start to display a list of boot devices, then select
>  the SanDisk USB drive. 
Just a guess, but I think that when the USB stick isn't present, the
firmware is removing what it considers to be a stale NVRAM boot entry.
Or it's reordering the boot priority. Otherwise the stick would be
booted by default, if present.


>  The internal drive for this machine dual boots Fedora 24 and
> Windows.
>  Only the external drive was used by Anaconda for the F25 installation.
>  It might be possible to update GRUB on the internal drive so it can boot
>  F25 from the external drive, but I rather like the present state where no
>  change was made to the internal storage medium. 
The boot manager aspects of GRUB are weak, it still depends on static
configuration rather than dynamic discovery. Discovery is difficult as
os-prober's existence and history shows. There's a proposed standard
to help, but there's no meaningful agreement on it among any of the
stake holders.

But yes, it's possible to statically get a boot entry into GRUB but
then it appears as if it's a valid option even when the stick isn't
present. If the stick has to be recreated/replaced, then that boot
entry won't work.




-- 
Chris Murphy

[Joerg Lechner]

Hi,
tested again.
Acer laptop Aspire E15 E5-571G EFI system
64GB USB 3.0 flash medium

Loaded F25 Alpha release Workstation
dnf update kernel -> got Kernel x86_64 4.8.0-0 rc8.git.0.1.fc25
made -according to the production process- a successful F25 build on the 64GB flash
medium
Tried to boot -> again Dracut error with the warnings:
- dev/fedora/root does not exist
- dev/fedora/swap does not exist
- dev/mapper/fedora-root does not exist

When I looked with F24 onto the F25 build, most partitions did not exist, i.e. EFI
partition was empty, also GRUB2 was nearly empty,
the size of the F25 build was was about 1,1GB.
Kind regards


 

 

 

-----Ursprüngliche Mitteilung----- 
Von: Chris Murphy <lists(a)colorremedies.com&gt;
An: For testing and quality assurance of Fedora releases
<test(a)lists.fedoraproject.org&gt;
Verschickt: Fr, 30 Sept 2016 8:35 pm
Betreff: Re: Fedora on usb connected media

On Fri, Sep 30, 2016 at 11:07 AM, Richard Ryniker <ryniker(a)alum.mit.edu&gt; wrote:>
Works for me.  I used a Samsung 940X laptop and a Sandisk 80GB USB3> external
SSD.>> This is a UEFI machine, and I installed using manual partitioning to>
re-use partitions on the external device, which contained an old Fedora> 23 system.  My
purpose here was to preserve an encrypted /home partition.> /boot, /boot/efi, /root and
a swap partition were reformatted by the> installer for the F25 system.>> In
order to boot from the external drive, I must use the EFI boot loader> - press F10
during start to display a list of boot devices, then select> the SanDisk USB drive.Just
a guess, but I think that when the USB stick isn't present, thefirmware is removing
what it considers to be a stale NVRAM boot entry.Or it's reordering the boot priority.
Otherwise the stick would bebooted by default, if present.> The internal drive for this
machine dual boots Fedora 24 and Windows.> Only the external drive was used by Anaconda
for the F25 installation.> It might be possible to update GRUB on the internal drive so
it can boot> F25 from the external drive, but I rather like the present state where
no> change was made to the internal storage medium.The boot manager aspects of GRUB are
weak, it still depends on staticconfiguration rather than dynamic discovery. Discovery is
difficult asos-prober's existence and history shows. There's a proposed standardto
help, but there's no meaningful agreement on it among any of thestake holders.But yes,
it's possible to statically get a boot entry into GRUB butthen it appears as if
it's a valid option even when the stick isn'tpresent. If the stick has to be
recreated/replaced, then that bootentry won't work.-- Chris
Murphy_______________________________________________test mailing list --
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[Chris Murphy]

On Fri, Sep 30, 2016 at 1:43 PM, Joerg Lechner <julechner(a)aol.com&gt; wrote:
>  Hi,
>  tested again.
>  Acer laptop Aspire E15 E5-571G EFI system
>  64GB USB 3.0 flash medium
>
>  Loaded F25 Alpha release Workstation
>  dnf update kernel -> got Kernel x86_64 4.8.0-0 rc8.git.0.1.fc25
>  made -according to the production process- a successful F25 build on the
>  64GB flash medium
>  Tried to boot -> again Dracut error with the warnings:
>  - dev/fedora/root does not exist
>  - dev/fedora/swap does not exist
>  - dev/mapper/fedora-root does not exist
>
>  When I looked with F24 onto the F25 build, most partitions did not exist,
>  i.e. EFI partition was empty, also GRUB2 was nearly empty,
>  the size of the F25 build was was about 1,1GB.
>  Kind regards 
You're doing a default autopartition installtaion to the USB media?
And it doesn't have an LVM partition for fedora-root and fedora-swap
LV's? That's an installer bug, although without logs from the
installer there's no way to figure out what's going on.



-- 
Chris Murphy

[Joerg Lechner]

Hi,
installed again with the original F25 Alpha public delivery live Workstation.
Here the anaconda.log from liveuser, if You need more logs, no problem, please tell me.
Kind regards

 

 

 

-----Ursprüngliche Mitteilung----- 
Von: Chris Murphy <lists(a)colorremedies.com&gt;
An: For testing and quality assurance of Fedora releases
<test(a)lists.fedoraproject.org&gt;
Verschickt: Fr, 30 Sept 2016 10:36 pm
Betreff: Re: Fedora on usb connected media

On Fri, Sep 30, 2016 at 1:43 PM, Joerg Lechner <julechner(a)aol.com&gt; wrote:>
Hi,> tested again.> Acer laptop Aspire E15 E5-571G EFI system> 64GB USB 3.0 flash
medium>> Loaded F25 Alpha release Workstation> dnf update kernel -> got Kernel
x86_64 4.8.0-0 rc8.git.0.1.fc25> made -according to the production process- a
successful F25 build on the> 64GB flash medium> Tried to boot -> again Dracut
error with the warnings:> - dev/fedora/root does not exist> - dev/fedora/swap does
not exist> - dev/mapper/fedora-root does not exist>> When I looked with F24 onto
the F25 build, most partitions did not exist,> i.e. EFI partition was empty, also GRUB2
was nearly empty,> the size of the F25 build was was about 1,1GB.> Kind
regardsYou're doing a default autopartition installtaion to the USB media?And it
doesn't have an LVM partition for fedora-root and fedora-swapLV's? That's an
installer bug, although without logs from theinstaller there's no way to figure out
what's going on.-- Chris Murphy_______________________________________________test
mailing list -- test(a)lists.fedoraproject.orgTo unsubscribe send an email to
test-leave(a)lists.fedoraproject.org

[Richard Ryniker]

Might this be a clue (from your anaconda log)?

  13:10:26,938 INFO anaconda: Running post-installation scripts
  13:10:26,938 INFO anaconda: Running kickstart %%post script(s)
  13:10:29,210 ERR anaconda: Error code 1 running the kickstart script at line 33
  13:10:29,210 INFO anaconda: All kickstart %%post script(s) have been run

I checked my installation, and have no "Error code 1" message.

[Joerg Lechner]

Hi,
tried now wether my installation way causes the error: automatic partitioning with reclaim
space. But it isn't, made the installation medium "clean" and used manual
partitioning -> same result shown in the dracut error reporting.
Kind regards

 

 

 

-----Ursprüngliche Mitteilung----- 
Von: Richard Ryniker <ryniker(a)alum.mit.edu&gt;
An: For testing and quality assurance of Fedora releases
<test(a)lists.fedoraproject.org&gt;
Verschickt: Sa, 1 Okt 2016 8:46 pm
Betreff: Re: Fedora on usb connected media

Might this be a clue (from your anaconda log)?  13:10:26,938 INFO anaconda: Running
post-installation scripts  13:10:26,938 INFO anaconda: Running kickstart %%post script(s) 
13:10:29,210 ERR anaconda: Error code 1 running the kickstart script at line 33 
13:10:29,210 INFO anaconda: All kickstart %%post script(s) have been runI checked my
installation, and have no "Error code 1"
message._______________________________________________test mailing list --
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Fwd: Fedora on usb connected media

[Joerg Lechner]

 Hi,
I should note, that the installation with manual partitioning installed showed after
installation the same partitions as was, when I had chosen automatic partitioning with
reclaim space. My wanted partitioning was ignored.
Kind regards

 

 

-----Ursprüngliche Mitteilung----- 
Von: Joerg Lechner <julechner(a)aol.com&gt;
An: test <test(a)lists.fedoraproject.org&gt;
Verschickt: So, 2 Okt 2016 8:57 am
Betreff: Re: Fedora on usb connected media


Hi,
tried now wether my installation way causes the error: automatic partitioning with reclaim
space. But it isn't, made the installation medium "clean" and used manual
partitioning -> same result shown in the dracut error reporting.
Kind regards

 

 

 

-----Ursprüngliche Mitteilung----- 
Von: Richard Ryniker <ryniker(a)alum.mit.edu&gt;
An: For testing and quality assurance of Fedora releases
<test(a)lists.fedoraproject.org&gt;
Verschickt: Sa, 1 Okt 2016 8:46 pm
Betreff: Re: Fedora on usb connected media

Might this be a clue (from your anaconda log)?  13:10:26,938 INFO anaconda: Running
post-installation scripts  13:10:26,938 INFO anaconda: Running kickstart %%post script(s) 
13:10:29,210 ERR anaconda: Error code 1 running the kickstart script at line 33 
13:10:29,210 INFO anaconda: All kickstart %%post script(s) have been runI checked my
installation, and have no "Error code 1"
message._______________________________________________test mailing list --
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