SOLVED: It's really time for full USB installation support

[richgrech]

I have to imagine many people are trying to run their servers on small boxes with minimal hardware (at least I am).

After so many versions it's really hard to believe that DVD is the only supported method of installation.

[bigfoot65]

USB may work using some of the Fedora 14 wiki guidance.

We have not tested or tried it yet though. Please identify this as a feature request in the bug tracker.

[sgtfoo]

external USB disc drive FTW!

otherwise, clever work with ISOs on to USBs will do the trick, and knowing how to point fstab at the mounted USB also makes it work.

The only issue is that USB sticks have much more limited I/O cycles

[PatrickDickey]

Would using something like Unetbootin work to create a USB installation media? Or do you need to do it the old-fashioned way (mkfs and dd or rsync the actual .iso disc to the usb thumb drive)?

I found this https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_c ... e_Live_USB on the Fedora Projects site, which covers creating a USB stick with a Fedora Installation DVD.

From it (the steps that I used on an Ubuntu installation) (replace "/dev/sdX" with the location of your thumb drive, and be sure you unmount it first)

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sudo mkfs.vfat -I /dev/sdX sudo dd if=/location/of/your/Amahi-installation.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=8M

Or for a Fedora installation, you can use:

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su -c "umount /dev/sdX" su -c "mkfs.vfat -I /dev/sdX" su -c "dd if=/location/of/your/Amahi-installation.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=8M"

I haven't tried the install yet, but it *should* work. To me this is a better method than using DVD's also, because you only have to use one thumb drive for any upgrade (until the thumb drive dies off, that is) as opposed to burning a new DVD for each version of Amahi.

Have a great day.
Patrick.

[bigfoot65]

No one has tested or provided guidance on a method that works. I would think the Unetbootin option would work, but have to test to see. Might try it some time.

You could do it the old fashioned way too I suppose. Only difference there is you would need to manually install Amahi following the guidance for a 32-bit install in the wiki.

[PatrickDickey]

No one has tested or provided guidance on a method that works. I would think the Unetbootin option would work, but have to test to see. Might try it some time.

You could do it the old fashioned way too I suppose. Only difference there is you would need to manually install Amahi following the guidance for a 32-bit install in the wiki.

Why would you have to manually install Amahi? I'm going on the assumption that the person would be making the USB from the AmahiExpress iso (at least that's how I would be doing it). I realize that if they make an actual Fedora 19 installation disc, then yes, they'd have to follow the guidance.

Have a great day.
Patrick.

[bigfoot65]

Not sure if the Express CD works with USB or not, never tried. One of the USB tools might work just fine. If someone tries it and works, they can post the guidance in the wiki.

Obviously the Express CD only works for 64-bit, so 32-bit via USB would need to be the full Fedora 19 DVD and install manually.

[supermouton]

Hello fellows,

I tried this week-end to use the last versions of both unetbootin & live-usb creator and ... it failed to even start the installation. Apparently there was a missing directory. I do not remember exactly what was the offending directory, but I found myself on a fallback console.

I will try to look further the next week-end to investigate (& to succeed this installation, i don't want to be stuck anymore on F14 since all my apps are in production on F19).


PS : i was the one asking sunday on irc about usb stick (i had to leave few hours later before someone took the time to answer)
PS2 : sorry for the digging up.

[seanchk]

I've been trying for 2 days to install Amahi and have tired 3 different USB sticks - every time the install fails.

Now I finally see this thread and learn that USB based installs are not supported.

Perhaps in the Amahi install instructions it could be made clear that the user needs to install from DVD not USB.

I'm kind of pissed off as I wiped a perfectly good Mint 16 install on this box to install Amahi.

This particular box does not have a DVD drive which is why I was trying to do it via USB

[bigfoot65]

Sorry to hear of your frustration. The install docs do indicate install using DVD drive.
http://docs.amahi.org/amahi-7-express.html

Maybe that is not clear enough and we should add a statement that indicates USB install is not supported.

Thanks for the feedback.