Slightly unusual test install case for f14 beta on a laptop

[mike cloaked]

On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 9:22 PM, mike cloaked <mike.cloaked at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have an old Amilo D68 laptop that cannot boot from a usbkey and I
> wanted to run a test install of the beta for f14 but without having to
> burn a physical DVD..... so I started poking around for a way to do it
> from a usbkey.

One pure Fedora method that should work I have not tested with a
usbkey, but I will run a test this weekend, is to write the DVD iso to
the usbkey using the livecd-tools package - i.e.

livecd-iso-to-disk --format --reset-mbr
/path-to/Fedora-14-i386-DVD.iso /dev/sdb1 with the usbkey unmounted -
and see if that is the only step needed in preparing the usbkey for a
full install once the key is booted.

The main watchpoint that should be in the documentation if this boots
and begins the install is to make sure that when reaching the step to
setup writing grub it is important to not allow it to write grub to
the MBR of the usbkey but to switch drives so that the installer
writes grub to the MBR of the main internal drive (in this case
/dev/sda) - otherwise even if the install completes then it won't boot
since grub will not have been written to the correct MBR!   This
certainly needs to be included in the documentation for this method
and I have seen a number of blog postings where users have set up
installs from a usbkey only to find that they get a grub prompt after
the install and they do not know how to proceed from that point (a
rescue disk can be used to write the MBR but those postings I have
seen appear to have no written solution to users asking what to do
next at that point)

-- 
mike c