This request was evaluated by Red Hat Product Management for inclusion in a Red
Hat Enterprise Linux major release.  Product Management has requested further
review of this request by Red Hat Engineering, for potential inclusion in a Red
Hat Enterprise Linux Major release.  This request is not yet committed for
inclusion.

This need sto be included in the Migration Guide and the Install Guide. 


Just to clip Han's text into the BZ ...

I wanted to give doing an anaconda install of rawhide a try, instead of using my usual install latest Fedora release use yum update routine.

To make things more interesting I didn't want to burn boot.iso to a CD, so I wanted todo a network install booting from USB-stick. This used to be easy thanks to diskboot.img, but that no longer exists. I've found some howto's on this, but those all use the partition less, whole disk as one big partition approach, which many bios-es don't like. So here is my formula for those of you who want todo a rawhide install this way:

You will need to have boot.iso from the rawhide images dir handy and you need to have syslinux installed.

Notes: Steps 1-3 prepare the usb-stick by making one large dos partition and formatting this, if your usb-stick is already set up like this (as most are) you can skip these steps (and keep your data intact). If you do follow through with steps 1-3 your data will be destroyed!! If you skip them you need approx. 16 MB of free space.

Note all commands below /dev/sdb is your usb-stick, adjust as necessary
1) fdisk /dev/sdb, create 1 large dos partition, and make it active / bootable
2) mkdosfs /dev/sdb
3) cat /usr/lib/syslinux/mbr.bin > /dev/sdb

4) syslinux /dev/sdb1
5) mkdir /mnt/diskboot
6) mkdir /mnt/isoboot
5) mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/diskboot
6) mount boot.iso /mnt/isoboot -o loop
7) cp /mnt/isoboot/isolinux/* /mnt/diskboot
8) grep -v local /mnt/isoboot/isolinux/isolinux.cfg > /mnt/diskboot/syslinux.cfg
9) umount /mnt/diskboot

Done!

Now you can boot from this usb-stick (hint enable usb legacy support in your BIOS) and do a ftp / http rawhide install, enjoy!

For the next RHEL 6 milestone, you *should* just be able to write the boot.iso directly to a usb stick (with cat, dd, etc.).

(In reply to comment #4)
> For the next RHEL 6 milestone, you *should* just be able to write the boot.iso
> directly to a usb stick (with cat, dd, etc.).    

I've just verified that this works, although with beta1 this hits bug 549398
(you need to manually select harddrive install and point anaconda at the usb stick).

I've added a release note documenting the procedure for creating a bootable usb medium this way.

Technical note added. If any revisions are required, please edit the "Technical Notes" field
accordingly. All revisions will be proofread by the Engineering Content Services team.

New Contents:
Instructions for creating USB bootable installation media

The boot.iso file which comes with x86 RHEL-6, is a hybrid iso, this means it can be simply copied to a usb stick to create a USB bootable installation media. To do this you need to know which disk is your usb stick. Do "dmesg" after plugging in the usb stick, and the last few lines will show you what disk is your usb stick, if for example your usb stick is sdb, do the following to copy the image to the usb stick:
cat boot.iso > /dev/sdb

Adjust /dev/sdb as necessary. WARNING: this will remove all
data on the usb stick!

README on DVD says:
This directory contains image files used during the Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 6 installation process.

The boot.iso file that is sometimes found in the images directory has
been removed for space reasons.  It is available as a separate download
from RHN.  boot.iso is an ISO 9660 image of a bootable CD-ROM.  It is useful
in cases where the CD-ROM installation method is not desired, but the
CD-ROM's boot speed would be an advantage.

To use this image file, burn the file onto CD-R (or CD-RW) media as you
normally would.

With the latest build boot.iso is not present on DVD images. The online README that is found in the tree directory reads:

This directory contains image files that can be used to create media
capable of starting the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 installation process.

The boot.iso file is an ISO 9660 image of a bootable CD-ROM.  It is useful
in cases where the CD-ROM installation method is not desired, but the
CD-ROM's boot speed would be an advantage.

To use this image file, burn the file onto CD-R (or CD-RW) media as you
normally would.



There's no mention how to use boot.iso to create a bootable USB stick. Is this FailsQA or expectations changed here?

Well, I suppose the original comment wanted those instructions on the DVD'S README.  And reading the current contents of the README, it doesn't indicate how to create a bootable USB stick.  I suppose the contents of the technical note should be incorporated.

But then, anaconda doesn't write this file out so I don't know where this change would need to be made.

Moving back to ASSIGNED and to releng. This could be a dupe of bug #587692 (6.1 bug).

*** Bug 610788 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I've added the following text to the end of the README:

It is also possible to use boot.iso to create bootable USB media.  To do
so, use the dd utility to copy the boot.iso content to the USB media.
Detailed instructions can be found in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 
Installation Guide.

README now reads:

This directory contains image files used during the Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 6 installation process.

The boot.iso file that is sometimes found in the images directory has
been removed for space reasons.  It is available as a separate download
from RHN.  boot.iso is an ISO 9660 image of a bootable CD-ROM.  It is useful
in cases where the CD-ROM installation method is not desired, but the
CD-ROM's boot speed would be an advantage.

To use this image file, burn the file onto CD-R (or CD-RW) media as you
normally would.

It is also possible to use boot.iso to create bootable USB media.  To do
so, use the dd utility to copy the boot.iso content to the USB media.
Detailed instructions can be found in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
Installation Guide.


This is with snap #12 (0818.0). Moving to VERIFIED.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0 is now available and should resolve
the problem described in this bug report. This report is therefore being closed
with a resolution of CURRENTRELEASE. You may reopen this bug report if the
solution does not work for you.