[Test-Announce] Fedora 15 Beta RC2 Available Now!

[John Keller]

On 04/11/2011 05:29 PM, mike cloaked wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 9:38 AM, John Keller <fedora at johnkeller.com> wrote:
> Would it be possible to make full DVD ISO in a similar way to the
>> netinst or livecd ISOs, so that it can be booted off a USB key easily? I
>> know it's possible to make a bootable USB by cherry-picking files off
>> the DVD ISO and running some commands, but it'd be so nice to be able to
>> do a simple "dd" and reboot. The net install works well, but sometimes
>> it's better to have all the files local (e.g. to avoid repository sync lag).
>>
>> Just wondering about the possibility (technically, time-wise) of a
>> hybrid image.
> 
> I don't know why you need a hybrid image - for ages I have used
> livecd-iso-to-disc to write the DVD install iso to a usbkey and it
> works fine for me (for several generations of Fedora as released as
> well as the alpha and betas). You do need a reasonably up to date
> Fedora system to run the command but certainly if you have f13 or f14
> it should be fine - (of course you have to have a large enough usbkey
> to hold the full file! and you also need to have it unmounted when you
> run the livecd-iso-to-disc command, and of course need livecd-tools
> installed on the system that will write the usbkey!)

It's not so much a need as a hope, and a convenience. I'm familiar with
the different tools for creating a bootable install USB from a DVD image
(from manual to fully automatic). But the tools that make it simple are
only available (or at least supported) under Fedora, and a relatively
recent version as you point out.

Having switched from another distro, I can vouch that the closer the
tools are to being part of the base system, the easier it is for people
to do it on another distro (or even another OS). Hard to get more basic
than "dd" :-) (it even exists for Windows).

Besides the simplicity via "dd", a hybrid image would also allow testing
the DVD image without having to burn a DVD. Granted, there's got to be a
difference in the initial bootstrap, but I'd expect that the rest
(especially the parts related to Anaconda) would be the same. I don't
know if that's enough reason on its own, but it'd be nice.

Again, it isn't a necessity - I can certainly get along fine with the
netinst image for testing and burning a DVD on final release. And if
it's not a goal for Fedora to make the DVD image a hybrid, instead
relying on external tools for making bootable USB keys, then I'm sure
that's fine for others. It's just my recent experiences that made me
think about the possibilities (and benefits) that a hybrid image could
bring and so I wanted to ask about that.

- John