Installation guide - ISO media and USB clarification

[Paul W. Frields]

On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 12:17:13PM -0400, James Laska wrote:
> Greetings folks,
> 
> Based on an issue discovered during Fedora 14 Beta testing, the Fedora
> QA team is currently discussing how best to address gaps in our test
> matrix [1].  The specific bug [2] potentially concerns using the
> livecd-iso-to-disk command to write ISO media other than the Live image
> to a USB drive.
> 
> From looking at the Fedora 13 installation guide, it recommends using
> the Live.iso and ...
>       * liveusb-creator on Windows [3]
>       * liveusb-creator, livecd-iso-to-disk or dd on Linux [4]
> 
> Later in the guide, it recommends using the boot.iso and ...
>       * livecd-iso-to-disk on Linux [5]
> 
> Does anyone know why that last bullet recommends using the boot.iso
> instead of the Live.iso?  I'm trying to reconcile what is documented and
> what is supported by the livecd-tools package.  This mail is intended to
> cover the documentation.
> 
> Thanks,
> James
> 
> [1] https://fedorahosted.org/fedora-qa/ticket/134
> [2] http://bugzilla.redhat.com/627789
> [3]
> http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/13/html/Installation_Guide/Making_USB_Media.html#Making_USB_Media-Windows
> [4]
> http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/13/html/Installation_Guide/Making_USB_Media-UNIX_Linux.html
> [5]
> http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/13/html-single/Installation_Guide/index.html#sect-New_Users-Alternative_Boot_Methods

>From what I can tell, you're right James -- this seems like a conflict
in the documentation.  If one reads the section as a new user, the
instructions for obtaining and making either CD/DVD or USB media have
already been covered in the chapter for [3] and [4] before one ever
reaches [5].

In cases where the user can't boot from a CD/DVD but wanted to use an
alternative installation method, I thought the 'dd' tool was used with
the 'boot.iso' minimal boot image to make a USB device, rather than
'livecd-iso-to-disk'.

Can anyone confirm this?  Is applying livecd-iso-to-disk to images
*other* than our Live images really supported?

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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