[12:43] <jerom1> hello
[12:45] <jerom1> Collin : For information, the patch applied on list-devices script doesn't work. I go to the server room will tomorrow in order to solve this problem.
[12:46] <jerom1> Have you an idea, can i force response with preseed in order to catch the "Human interaction" ?
[01:16] <cjwatson> jerom1: "doesn't work"?
[01:18] <cjwatson> jerom1: you can just not preseed it at all, run through the UI by hand until the partitioner, alt-F2 and run 'list-devices disk'
[01:18] <cjwatson> forcing a response with preseeding is silly, since preseeding is all about noninteractivity
[01:21] <jerom1> ok i test your command tomorrow
[01:21] <jerom1> now i have not access to the server
[03:17] <cr3> I'm trying to build a mini iso so that I can simply boot from a CD device and then specify a root device like a USB drive which might not be bootable on some machines. apart from copying initrd.gz and vmlinuz, what else might I need?
[03:18] <cr3> can I simply install grub on the iso and then specify the USB drive or will that not work ifthe machine doesn't support booting from USB?
[03:28] <cjwatson> the problem would be identifying the USB device to grub
[03:28] <cjwatson> if you can reliably know what that is, then that should work fine
[03:29] <cjwatson> is there some reason you can't use syslinux like we normally use on CDs?
[03:35] <cr3> cjwatson: might grub support specyfing a UUID? that would be a reliable way to identify the USB device
[03:36] <cr3> cjwatson: if not, I'm not sure how to identify the USB device. I'm not even sure what kind of educated guesses I could try
[03:37] <cjwatson> you can pass root=UUID=... to the kernel, but grub still needs to know the device and doesn't accept UUIDs
[03:37] <cr3> cjwatson: as for using syslinux, I hadn't thought of that, I was imply browsing the hierarchy of files and directories on the live CD to inspire myself. I should probably familiarize myself with syslinux.
[03:37] <cjwatson> (because it needs to read the kernel off the device)
[03:37] <cjwatson> likely device names are (hd0), (hd1), etc.
[03:37] <cr3> cjwatson: usually, the USB device is mounted from /dev/sda1, but that apparently didn't work when passed to grub
[03:37] <cjwatson> possibly (hd0,1) etc. if the device is partitiond
[03:37] <cjwatson> ed
[03:37] <cjwatson> please read the grub info documentation
[03:38] <cjwatson> or get Jeff to fill you in on the basics
[03:38] <cr3> heh, I'm totally off the track there :)
[03:38] <cjwatson> grub has its own device naming scheme
[03:39] <cjwatson> if the BIOS can't boot from USB, it's possible that syslinux will have trouble - I think it just uses BIOS calls
[03:40] <cjwatson> also, have you considered Smart Boot Manager instead of rolling your own?
[03:41] <cjwatson> oh, hmm, I don't think SBM supports USB so never mind
[03:41] <cr3> cjwatson: if the BIOS can't boot from USB, that's why I considered booting the kernel from the CD and then providing a root device to the kernel
[03:41] <cjwatson> ah
[03:41] <cr3> cjwatson: darn, that seemed like a promissing suggestion :)
[03:41] <cjwatson> ok, you can do that with UUIDs
[03:41] <cjwatson> worth a try anyway
[03:44] <cr3> cjwatson: you're saying to use UUIDs for which boot method? the cd?
[03:44] <cjwatson> no the root= option in the append line passed to the kernel
[03:46] <cr3> cjwatson: to the kernel loaded from the cd, right? if so, I still need to build my own cd because the kernel modules on the root device have been updated and the initramfs doesn't seem to contain usb related modules
[03:59] <cjwatson> yes
[03:59] <cjwatson> I'd entirely expect you to need to build your own CD
[08:55] <cjwatson> aha. silly gtk.