Bug#764587: installation-reports: After successful installation from usb stick the stick is not recognised on reboot.

[Brian Potkin <brian@copernicus.demon.co.uk>]

Hello Philip,

I'm assuming that since you did not CC the bug that this is intended to
be a private mail.


On Wed 26 Nov 2014 at 18:22:52 +1300, Philip Charles wrote:

> 
> > I have a USB stick that is used for installing Wheezy and which is
> > recognised on reboot. Instead of writing DVD1 to the stick I do the
> > following:
> > 
> > 1. Have a FAT16 partition spanning the whole stick. Format as vfat.
> > 
> > 2. Install GRUB in the MBR and copy the hd-media vmlinuz and initrd.gz
> >    to /boot and write a grub.cfg to boot from them. Copy DVD1 to /.
> > 
> > 3. Copy the files in /pool on DVD1 to /debian on the stick. Create a
> >    packages file in /debian. We now have a mirror which can be used
> >    during and after the install.
> > 
> > 4. Install, preseeding with a late_command for tasks. A few lines of
> >    mine in that command are
> > 
> >      mkdir /target/media/usbmount; \
> >      mount --bind /hd-media /target/media/usbmount; \
> >      sed -i 's/^/#/' /target/etc/apt/sources.list; \
> >      echo "deb [ trusted=yes ] file:/media/usbmount/debian wheezy main" >> /target/etc/apt/sources.list
> > 
> > 5. Install additional software after the install by mounting the mirror
> >    on /media/usbmount.
> 
> What I do is to hack /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/00CDMountPoint
> to read,
> Acquire::cdrom {
> mount "/media/usb";
> }
> Dir::Media::MountPath "/media/usb";
> 
> where usb was cdrom.  Then the the system looks for the installation
> media at the usb port.

I originally did something like this with the first eight CD images and
used apt-cdrom. The user user experience with having to mount and
unmount different images wasn't (IMO) the best, so I re-thought the
issue.

I have a script, apt-usb. A user types 'apt-usb cups' and is prompted to
insert the stick. Re-issuing the command mounts the stick, installs the
packages and unmounts the stick. apt-usb is copied to /target during the
initial install.

Regards,

Brian.