Draft document on burning ISO images

[Stuart Ellis]

On Sun, 2006-04-02 at 12:53 +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> 
> >> I'm thinking that any Windows users thinking of installing Fedora are
> >> more adept at burning ISO's that you give them credit for.
> > 
> > Considering the flood of questions every release, I dont think so.
> > Providing good detailed documentation is not a question of credit but
> > guidance.
> 
> I would have thought that one could say everything about burnings ISOs
> in a few sentences;
> it hardly seems to me to warrant a separate document.
> 
> My view would be that a document on how _not_ to burn ISOs,
> ie how to install Fedora without using CDs (or DVDs)
> would be much more useful.

Bear in mind that you need to boot the machine before you can select an
installation source (or "method" as Anaconda calls them). Virtual
machines can use image files as boot devices, but the supported boot
options for a physical machine are PXE, disc, and bootable USB device.

> I know there is a section in the Installation Guide
> on Alternative Installation Methods,
> but it strikes me as rather esoteric -
> eg I would prefer to read the actual commands one has to give
> if using PXEboot, for example.

The IG covers all of the options and combinations, which makes it hard
to present a linear set of instructions, although somebody is looking at
revising these parts of the IG to make it simpler.

Plenty of people clearly do want a simple set of steps, and various
popular third-party sites offer installation tutorials. I'd be happy to
accept help on doing something within Fedora to address this need.

> I've had a surprising amount of trouble with the FC-5 CDs -
> quite possibly due to my CD-burning hardware -
> and this has led me to wonder if too much emphasis
> is not put on CDs as installation medium.
> 
> If you have only one machine, is it really worth burning a CD?
> Many people have huge disks nowadays,
> so if you have to download the ISOs,
> isn't it just as simple (and more reliable, in my case at least)
> to install from hard disk?
> And if you have lots of machines,
> isn't a USB drive as easy to use today as CDs?

I'd personally recommend that people who have multiple machines and a
bit of know-how setup a local mirror, and boot from PXE or a boot-only
CD. We have a tutorial for mirrors, and the IG has an admonition that
gently prods people toward it:

http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/mirror/

As you say, drives are now so big that you can easily store all of
Fedora Core on a regular machine and use it as an installation and yum
source. Indeed, every machine on your network if you like.

USB boot is relatively new, and isn't yet as standard and reliable as CD
drives, which are on pretty much every machine made in the last
half-decade (apart from ultraportables).

-- 

Stuart Ellis

stuart at elsn.org

Fedora Documentation Project: http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/docs/

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