Re: is it possible to select among multiple ISOs (on a USB stick) ?

[Frédéric Boiteux <fboiteux@free.fr>]

Le Thu, 8 Oct 2009 18:26:59 +0200,
Christian Perrier <bubulle@debian.org> a écrit :

> Quoting Frédéric Boiteux (fboiteux@free.fr):
> 
> > Is there a way to tell d-i to use a specific ISO ? a command line
> > to the kernel ? Or do you see a way to be able to get Lenny and
> > Squeeze installers on the same USB stick ?
> 
> 
> No, this is not actually possible.
> 
> The package to look at to implement this is iso-scan. Excerpt from its
> code:
> 
> .../...
>                         if register_cd $iso_to_try $iso_device; then
>                                 # This could be more sophisticated,
> and try # to deal with multiple Debian ISO's. For
>                                 # now, once we've got a Debian ISO,
> any # Debian ISO, we're done.
>                                 db_progress STOP
> .../...
> 
> So, in short, we need to find someone volunteering to implement
> this..:)

Ok. As a temporary workaround, I'll rename *.iso files I don't want to
use to avoid selecting the wrong one…

I would try to implement a solution based on giving a hint about
which iso we want to use by a 'param=value' in the kernel command line
(as it's usually done in Debian Live's customization system), but
I don't know if this kind of behaviour is suited to debian-installer
(which I don't know in depth) ? Perhaps there is a more 'regular' way
to do this ?

To test it, I have to learn how to build a debian-installer image with
patched iso-scan, so it can take a while before I can build my patch.

If I can go forward on this problem, I'll post on the debian-boot list.

	with regards,
		Fred.