Anpheus
October 3rd, 2008, 06:24 AM
I will be succinct, the information scattered on the internet is inconsistent, incomplete, and typically limited in utility on how to boot a Linux 'live' environment from disk or installing Linux from disk.
Not saying it's impossible, I actually got unetbootin working for one ISO, but it's still a matter of trial and error, and it's not nearly as simple as having a CD burnt with the image on it.
What I would like is the ability to quickly and easily download an ISO and have it boot as if it were a CD. Maybe this can be accomplished with an initrd that contains Xen and can trick the liveCD into thinking it's on /dev/cdrom when it's really /dev/sdblah. It doesn't matter how it works. I want this topic to be a brainstorm of how it can currently be done, with all their imperfections, ways that we could potentially do it in the future, and how we get to the latter from the former.
Let me just quickly summarize what I would currently like to do, given my current hardware. I would like to install GRUB to a primary and secondary hard disk, and also to an external (USB-attached) external hard disk. GRUB would reference dozens of netboot installs. I want all of them on disk somewhere (as tiny netboot installs,) I could script the operating system (primary OS is Vista, don't kill me) to update the available netboots perhaps. I would also like a few liveCDs from different distros that I could swap in and out as I wanted to, this would let me both install and play around with different linux distros on my CD-less laptop and my desktop, and also be great for just doing quick checks when repairing other people's computers. (Or even converting them to Linux! See, I told you not to kill me after I said the V-word.) Then, I would like some DVD installs, the non-liveCD kind. OpenSUSE has one that contains a truly inspiring quantity of packages. Stuff like that.
Current issues:
unetbootin is unreliable on my machine. The Ubuntu 8.04.1 64-bit LiveCD drops me down to the initramfs every time. I've tried replacing quiet splash with all_generic_ide and it doesn't work. I've tried changing the partition I copied files to, and that doesn't work. I also tried FAT and NTFS filesystems. I think the problem might be that I am telling it to do a USB install and I'm specifying an internal hard drive. More on that follows:
It only lets me install from one of my internal hard disks, the one Windows is running on. I don't like it polluting and renaming my primary hard disk with all sorts of files. Also, it makes me more worried that something could go wrong. I have more than one internal disk and about a dozen partitions, one of which I specifically created for the purpose of letting unetbootin/linux installers/liveCDs/DVDs have a sandbox with a useful filesystem. Why can't I use them?
Unetbootin to external USB drives doesn't list anything unless I check "show all drives." This is slightly scary.
Unetbootin to internal hard drives doesn't let me check show all drives.
Unetbootin's bootloader tends to not work and I use neogrub from easyBCD to manually specify ubnkern/ubninit, the .mbr or whatever unetbootin created. This might relate to the issue above, with it looking for a USB hard disk.
There's no functionality to boot ISOs without time-consuming expansion, is this something that could be implemented in a script or mounted by the initial ram image? Could that carry into greater functionality in the future, say, to boot a Vista Recovery Environment or install disk?
If you have any advice on the specific goals I'd like to push for the developer community, some comments or additions, please post them. This topic is not solely about my specific problems, but about making the process of installing Linux as easy as possible, as accessible as possible. Not just ubuntu, but every OS could benefit from the achievement of the goals above.
If this isn't the right place for this post (Installation & Upgrades) please inform a moderator.
Not saying it's impossible, I actually got unetbootin working for one ISO, but it's still a matter of trial and error, and it's not nearly as simple as having a CD burnt with the image on it.
What I would like is the ability to quickly and easily download an ISO and have it boot as if it were a CD. Maybe this can be accomplished with an initrd that contains Xen and can trick the liveCD into thinking it's on /dev/cdrom when it's really /dev/sdblah. It doesn't matter how it works. I want this topic to be a brainstorm of how it can currently be done, with all their imperfections, ways that we could potentially do it in the future, and how we get to the latter from the former.
Let me just quickly summarize what I would currently like to do, given my current hardware. I would like to install GRUB to a primary and secondary hard disk, and also to an external (USB-attached) external hard disk. GRUB would reference dozens of netboot installs. I want all of them on disk somewhere (as tiny netboot installs,) I could script the operating system (primary OS is Vista, don't kill me) to update the available netboots perhaps. I would also like a few liveCDs from different distros that I could swap in and out as I wanted to, this would let me both install and play around with different linux distros on my CD-less laptop and my desktop, and also be great for just doing quick checks when repairing other people's computers. (Or even converting them to Linux! See, I told you not to kill me after I said the V-word.) Then, I would like some DVD installs, the non-liveCD kind. OpenSUSE has one that contains a truly inspiring quantity of packages. Stuff like that.
Current issues:
unetbootin is unreliable on my machine. The Ubuntu 8.04.1 64-bit LiveCD drops me down to the initramfs every time. I've tried replacing quiet splash with all_generic_ide and it doesn't work. I've tried changing the partition I copied files to, and that doesn't work. I also tried FAT and NTFS filesystems. I think the problem might be that I am telling it to do a USB install and I'm specifying an internal hard drive. More on that follows:
It only lets me install from one of my internal hard disks, the one Windows is running on. I don't like it polluting and renaming my primary hard disk with all sorts of files. Also, it makes me more worried that something could go wrong. I have more than one internal disk and about a dozen partitions, one of which I specifically created for the purpose of letting unetbootin/linux installers/liveCDs/DVDs have a sandbox with a useful filesystem. Why can't I use them?
Unetbootin to external USB drives doesn't list anything unless I check "show all drives." This is slightly scary.
Unetbootin to internal hard drives doesn't let me check show all drives.
Unetbootin's bootloader tends to not work and I use neogrub from easyBCD to manually specify ubnkern/ubninit, the .mbr or whatever unetbootin created. This might relate to the issue above, with it looking for a USB hard disk.
There's no functionality to boot ISOs without time-consuming expansion, is this something that could be implemented in a script or mounted by the initial ram image? Could that carry into greater functionality in the future, say, to boot a Vista Recovery Environment or install disk?
If you have any advice on the specific goals I'd like to push for the developer community, some comments or additions, please post them. This topic is not solely about my specific problems, but about making the process of installing Linux as easy as possible, as accessible as possible. Not just ubuntu, but every OS could benefit from the achievement of the goals above.
If this isn't the right place for this post (Installation & Upgrades) please inform a moderator.