Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 271881
Boot ISO image on USB disk from non-USB bootable computer
Last modified: 2013-03-05 22:51:54 EST
Description of problem: I'm downloading F8-Test1 because I want to participate in the testing process. I don't want to burn another CD that's destined to be a coaster. I would dearly love a new laptop that has USB boot support - I could then avail of Grubs ISO boot capability, but alas I don't have one of those. I know other OS's provide floppy disk images you can bootstrap an install from. I know it's possible to compile a kernel image with loadable modules for 1. USB disk support 2. ISO image mounting so it would seem perfectly possible for such a kernel diskette to mount a USB device then mount the ISO image on that device and chroot from there. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): F8-Test1 How reproducible: Too often Steps to Reproduce: 1. Download ISO image 2. Burn another coaster? 3. Actual results: Expected results: Additional info: This would also make it possible to compare multiple live images stored on the same USB drive - as grub boot options? It would also help if you supplied 'deltas' when Fedora 8 is released, containing what was updated to save us poor souls from having to download the entire image again. This delta could be a script that patches the already-downloaded-iso to the F8 iso.
Floppies don't work anymore -- the size of the kernel alone is more than the size of a floppy these days. CDs or booting from USB are the only way to go.
Ok - not an option. But for testing purposes what about the following 1. Copy the CD's isolinux directory to /boot/f8t1 # mount -o ro -o loop /opt/tests/Fedora-8-Test-1-KDE-Live-i686.iso /mnt/loop # cp -fr /mnt/loop/isolinux /boot/f8t1 2. Add a Grub entry title Fedora 8 Test 1 root (hd0,0) kernel /f8t1/vmlinuz ro root=Fedora-8-Test-1-KDE-Live-i686 liveimg nocoaster initrd /f8t1/initrd-lvm.img 3. Create a modified initrd.img for LVM/local ISO image to handle "nocoaster" /boot/f8t1/init-lvm.ing would be a modified version of /boot/f8t1/initrd.img containing lvm (and lvm.static?) as well as a modified init script that did the following if [ "x$nocoaster" == "x1" ] ; then echo "********************************************************************" echo "********************************************************************" echo "****************************** NO ********************************" echo "***************************** COASTER *****************************" echo "********************************************************************" echo "********************************************************************" echo "Scanning logical volumes" lvm vgscan --ignorelockingfailure echo "Activating logical volumes" lvm vgchange -ay --ignorelockingfailure VolGroup00 mount -t ext3 -o ro /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /localdrive rootfstype=iso9660 mountoptions=-o loop -o ro thingtomount=/localdrive/opt/tests/Fedora-8-Test-1-KDE-Live-i686.iso mount -n -t $rootfstype $mountoptions $thingtomount /sysroot echo "Dropping to a shell. " echo "Check /localdrive and /sysroot and exit shell to continue. Good luck!" bash else mount -n -t $rootfstype $mountoptions $thingtomount /sysroot fi You should be able to tell from the last mount statement where this goes. I got this far by copying lvm from my current kernels initrd.img. Unfortunately I got kicked into a bash prompt before this (learning curve) but was at least able to run the two lvm lines. lvm couldn't get logical volumes working - missing entry in /proc/misc - missing kernel module? I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this - should I clone this bug using a new summary like "Boot ISO image from local disk"?
Created attachment 184521 [details] A modified version of initrd.img capable of handling "nocoaster"
Lots of changes to init and even etc/fstab to run an iso image from /opt/tests/Fedora-8-Test-1-KDE-Live-i686.iso on /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00, using the above addition to grub.conf. I added 'nocoaster check' to my grub.conf - the iso image checksummed OK. I'm sure you could do better - option to unsquash iso.img locally - better ordering of my changes in init - script to provide an easier means to specify the ISO location and to automatically determine whether it resides on a logical volume. - easier means of generating initrd.img (in my case initrd-lvm.img) Notes on Fedora 8 Test 1: 1. It's _slow_. I suspect this is squashfs at work - should offer unsquash. 2. Release notes seem to refer to Fedora 7. 3. Hyperlinks don't work on release notes. 4. kpowersave still crashes with alt-click/configure kpowersave(as it does in F7)
Using this approach in combination F8 'delta' images one could make a logical volume 'sandwich' with the F8 test 1 image at the bottom, intervening delta images successively above it and the sparse file on top. This could really encourage widespread testing, but I think these deltas and F8 test 1 would have to be unsquashed.
While things like this can be hacked together, doing it right has to be such that it doesn't depend on specific partitioning schemes, etc. Which is going to make it quite a bit harder and I don't know that it's really realistic. Especially as you have to be very careful mucking around with (potentially not cleanly unmounted filesystems, or even ones that are actively hibernated). If you want to keep working towards it, you can send patches to fedora-livecd-list, but I have some serious reservations up-front and I don't think that the complication is really going to be worth it.