Title says it all. They cost $10. Figuring out how to work this stuff with syslinux etc, boot flags, etc. is a pain. Why can't distribution of a "live distribution on USB stick" be the equivalent of an ISO image---ok, I should have to do dd if=myimage.img of=/dev/sdusbstick a bzip2-ed image should do great. Reproducible: Always
It's no more of a pain than installing with a regular CD. Just follow our LiveUSB howto[1] (yes, it will be updated shortly for 2007.0). It's all you need, really. [1] http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/liveusb.xml
Aside from there already being a guide for something like this, this isn't really feasible. Creating a 1GB image leaves owners of USB sticks <1GB out in the cold. It would also leave someone with a >1GB stick with part of their stick unusable. On top of that, not all 1GB sticks are equal. They are usually "within 50MB of 1GB" sticks.
I know. I did. Doesn't work for me right now, but probably not gentoo's fault (probably the USB boot system on my computer). A dd would have made sure I have no problems. it was just a suggestion---and I thought a low-cost one. /iaw
oh...and a $10 stick (soon to be a $2-$5 stick) is something people can buy for fun. I did not think substitute for the USB instructions. I was thinking complement. regards, /iaw
I know I am being ridiculous...sorry guys. how about a script that builds the entire USB stick (including verification that it will boot, perhaps by trying it in a VM-type environment), and can do it either from an ISO image or over the www web: install-to-flash.sh /dev/sdxx install-to-flash.sh -i /dev/cdrom /dev/sdxx install-to-flash.sh -i /tmp/gentoo.iso /dev/sdxx please close this bug again, but I wanted to get these 10 secs of attention. regards, /ivo
If you want to create such a script, then perhaps we'll consider it. Until then, I don't think anybody in releng is interested in doing anything like this.
I'll put this simply. Release Engineering doesn't care about USB sticks. The USB guide was written by another developer, and was maintained by him. We make no guarantees that the methods described in it will work, nor do we care to guarantee it. The method as described on the guide will *not* work with certain releases. I know it will not work with 2006.1's media. Also, people tend to forget that we're all volunteers. It is very easy to tell someone else to do something. At any rate, Andrew is right, this is a WONTFIX. Even if you were to write up a script that did this, we wouldn't support it nor make any guarantee that it would continue to work across releases. Sorry, but the CD media is our primary concern. Unsupported media isn't something we care to support and we don't have the manpower to change that any time soon.
Situation changed in past 5 years. CD/DVD mechanics are no longer included in laptops and computers. What you think about installing from USB ? Maybe is time to reconsider re-opening this bug. It could help to lot of Gentoo administrators.
