Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 110007
No way to specify ISOs once installed
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:10:33 EST
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322) Description of problem: I have computer with no CD ROM or internal floppy drive. I copied ISO's on the hardrive and boot from external USB floppy from TDK. Once fedora is installed I want to install sapdb 7.4.3.30 from rpm. THe installer asks me to insert Fedora's 3rd cd into my cdrom drive which I don't even have. I need a way how to direct it to ISOs on my hdd. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. See summary Additional info:
You can use the loopback file system to mount an ISO if you don't have a CDROM. Sorry, I don't know the options of the top of my head, start by reading the man page for mount.
I think this is still a major USABILITY bug. I as a non expert user would expect to get a dialog which either allows me to point it to the directory (the Windows does) or and ISO file and do all the rest for me. There is now reason why a user installing Fedora from ISOs should know how to mount them as CDROM.
Why "mahor"? Most users have a CDROM, and loopback mounts work for the small minority of users like you that do not.
Well it is my opinion, you don't have to fix it if you don't feel like it. I am experienced developer but not experienced Unix administrator. Until I found this problem I had no idea about loopback mounts. What I knew was that in Windows if it wants to install anything it allows me to specify location. Thats it, thats the simple thing I would expect from the OS. I would also don't expect it to ask me for CDROM if I don't have it ;-). To me it is inconsistency, the setup allows you to specify ISOs so you can install the OS but then you are on your own. Even if I do have CDROM, I don't want to juggle the disks all the time (or give them to my customers). I would rather copy the files on the harddrives so they have them anytime they need them. Disk is cheap. I don't expect them to know (lots of them are computer illiterate) how to do the loopback mount or even to go to commandline. But they know how to browse the disk and find the file I point them to. Anyway, it is just my opinion, take it for what it is worth.
By the way, I did try it. I loopback mounted the ISO image but it doens't find it. Whats worse, once I canceled the install because of failed dependencies and no cdrom, it still thing the package is installed and all around my disk are files from the package. So I do think this is a problem.