Bug#266636: Support mounting USB-sticks in i386 netboot initrd

[Frans Pop <aragorn@tiscali.nl>]

Hi Joey,

On Friday 20 August 2004 12:51, Joey Hess wrote:
> Frans Pop wrote:
> > I think it would be a good idea to have the option to mount an USB-stick
> > early in the process of an i386 netboot installation.
>
> I seem to be overflowing in people asking for this, but none of them
> explain *why* you'd want to do this.

I know you've closed this bug after setting the priority for the package to 
standard, but I'd like to reopen the discussion anyway.
(Sorry I did not answer earlier, but I had a dying motherboard in my desktop 
at the time and had to switch a lot of stuff over to my laptop.)

Setting the priority to standard allows to mount the USB-stick only after 
Netcfg, download of d-i components and HW-detect are run.

I was thinking of including USB-stick support in the netboot initrd (so you 
could mount them straight after booting d-i) for the following reasons:
- would allow user to save logs to USB-stick on laptops without floppy if
  installation fails before network is up;
  (especially if the patch by Osamu Aoki in #267219 makes it)
- maybe preseed files could be read off the USB-stick;
- I was going to use it myself for testing purposes (put modified versions of
  languagechooser/countrychooser files on the stick and copy them over the
  default ones before running these steps).

A disadvantage could be that I think mounting a USB-stick early would make the 
stick /dev/disc/disc0 and put any ide/scsi discs after that. The stick would 
then also be listed first in partman.
However, the same is probably currently true for CD and floppy installs.

Cheers,
FJP