DVD Installer On USB?

[Cygnia]

As many here may know, it's not possible to put the F16 DVD installation media on USB because of a bug where it can't find stuff and connects to the web instead of using the info on the USB key, so it's necessary to use a physical DVD. Does anyone know if that problem has been solved for F17. I'd like to save a little money as well as the earth this time. Thanks in advance.

--
Bryce

[smr54]

What I've found (and of course, your experience may differ) is that I can use the livecd-iso-to-disk works, even though it's not a live cd, wiith the disk being the USB partition, e.g livecd-iso-to-disk Fedora17.iso /dev/sdd1

Generally, though not always, I'm finding that livecd-iso-to-disk is best for RH based distributions (CentOS, Fedora) and Unetbootin works better for Debian based (Ubuntu and its many offshoots).

This has worked for me with all but the first alphas for F17. (Usually, I use the netinstall, but it also worked with at least one of the DVD versions, don't remember which one.)

[AndrewSerk]

I do the same as smr54:

su -
livecd-iso-to-disk --format --reset-mbr /path-to-iso/installDVD.iso /dev/sdx

[smr54]

I don't do reset-mbr. One thing it seems Andrew is doing is using the whole device. If the USB stick is /dev/sdd I make a partition and use sdd1, rather than sdd. Andrew, did you mean sdx or do you usually use sdxn, where x is the device and n a partition on the device.

I should probably read the docs to see if the reset-mbr is necessary, but it hasn't bitten me yet.

[AndrewSerk]

You are correct Scott, I use the whole usb stick and the command I posted will wipe the USB disk assuming you change the x in "/dev/sdx" to the real device location.
I don't think it is necessary to use the whole usb stick and your method of "/dev/sdx# " should work fine and not wipe the whole stick, but just the partition.

I guess its just personal preference :)

[Cygnia]

Thanks for all the replies, but I'm unclear if this relates to the problem. It's not that you can't "burn" the image onto the USB stick, it's a weird bug in the installation program where it won't know to use the packages on the USB drive but tries to connect to the web. Only when a physical DVD is used will it work. I was just wondering if that bug had been fixed or not. Thanks again though.

[AndrewSerk]

Hi Cygnia,
I used the above method this past week for a F17 install without issue.

[smr54]

@Andrew, thanks for the quick answer. @Bryce, you might have run into something that many people do. When installing, I think you have to, when it's listing repos to use, uncheck the testing or possibly updates one--otherwise, it will insist that you need an Internet connection. This is covered somewhere else in a recent post, I believe, but I can't find that post right now.

I haven't done a recent actual test though.

[DBelton]

to answer the question..

Using livecd-iso-to-disk does work around the bug where the installer isn't able to find the repo if you put the DVD onto a USB drive instead of DVD media. livecd-iso-to-disk will add the appropriate repo= parameter to the kernel line for you so anaconda knows where to find the repo.

Another way is to manually edit your kernel line and use the repo=hd:/dev/sdX parameter.

But the bug is that anaconda will search optical media for the installation repos, even when it is on a USB stick. And when it doesn't find any repos on optical media, requires a network to be set up so that it can use the online repos. (It comes up with the requirement to set up the network BEFORE giving you options on which repositories to select)

[Cygnia]

OK, thanks to all who responded. I'm glad to hear that it can be done. Now I can't wait until next month's release! Thanks again.