Bug 1354201 - SUSE Studio ImageWriter probably shouldn't be recommended
Summary: SUSE Studio ImageWriter probably shouldn't be recommended
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG
Alias: None
Product: Fedora Documentation
Classification: Retired
Component: install-guide
Version: devel
Hardware: Unspecified
OS: Unspecified
unspecified
unspecified
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Jaromir Hradilek
QA Contact: Fedora Docs QA
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2016-07-10 16:20 UTC by Chris Murphy
Modified: 2020-09-20 00:56 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2020-09-20 00:56:33 UTC
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Chris Murphy 2016-07-10 16:20:24 UTC
Description of problem:

https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/24/html/Installation_Guide/sect-preparing-boot-media.html


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
Fedora 23
Fedora 24


Actual results:

Docs says "Download and run the SUSE Studio ImageWriter or Rawrite32." The ImageWriter link URL is https://github.com/downloads/openSUSE/kiwi/ImageWriter.exe

The problems are:
- I can't verify the provenance of the binary downloaded from that link. I get 404 errors when I try to get to each parent directory, so I have no idea what this binary really is, who produced it, how old it is, what version it is, etc. I think recommending users download an almost random binary on Windows of all OS's probably isn't good advice.

- openSUSE considers ImageWriter unmaintained. "We used to have SUSE Studio ImageWriter compiled for windows, but this is not maintained anymore."
https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Create_a_Live_USB_stick_using_Windows

And they point to a different URL for that project than we do, which hasn't had a pull request or issue responded to in over a year. Nevertheless the code there is probably newer than the binary we're offering to download.
http://www.github.com/openSUSE/imagewriter


Expected results:

Let's just recommend Rawrite32, it's recently updated and it looks like the binaries are signed.
http://www.netbsd.org/~martin/rawrite32/

Additional info:

Comment 2 Chris Murphy 2020-09-20 00:56:33 UTC
Not sure when it was fixed, but it's not in the guide anymore.
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora/rawhide/install-guide/install/Preparing_for_Installation/


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