[00:12] <Zelut> cjwatson: does my latest firewall.sh make any more sense than the first?
[11:42] <xivulon> quite a few people have been asking me about creating bootable usb key/hd via wubi
[11:42] <xivulon> I would think that wubi is not the best approach because of hardware profiles
[11:42] <xivulon> but it would be quite easy to use grub4dos + ISO and use the hooks to superimpose a r/w filesystem via unionfs
[11:43] <xivulon> (grub4dos can be added to the MBR of the removable device)
[11:47] <xivulon_> hmm not sure if you got the last msg
[11:48] <xivulon_> basicly I was wondering if that was already the subject of a discussion at last UDS with cjwatson (I attended half of it).
[14:45] <evand> we did talk about USB images at UDS (in the hallway) but it was never implemented.  It's scheduled again this time.
[14:45] <xivulon> evand can you remaind me what was it about exactly? I missed half of the discussion
[14:45] <xivulon> Is this to have a bootable USB with LiveCD ISO?
[14:46] <evand> Pre made installer images on a USB drive.
[14:46] <xivulon> I talked to ogra on #devel, I think he worked on something like that too
[14:46] <evand> It's already possible and there's a guide on the wiki for it, this is more for fixing the necessary bugs and getting a tool created to do the heavy lifting.
[14:47] <evand> (For Windows and Ubuntu)
[14:47] <xivulon> It would also be possible to use standard squashfs and unionfs to override some of the files using existing hooks
[14:47] <xivulon> do you have a link to the guide?
[14:47] <evand> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick
[14:47] <xivulon> the advantage of the above being that you do not need to create a full squashfs/iso every time
[14:48] <cjwatson> xivulon: I want this to be simple autogeneration from the CD images
[14:48] <cjwatson> no fancy tech
[14:49] <cjwatson> that way we don't have to ship even more 700MB blobs around
[14:49] <cjwatson> wubi doesn't need to be involved
[14:49] <evand> hrm, that's the second time I've seen the use case of using Wubi at work because you're only allowed to install Windows applications (#ubuntu).
[14:49] <xivulon> cjwatson, I was suggesting 2 different things
[14:50] <xivulon> 1) is similar to evand link above, with the addition of hooks + unionfs as an alternative to customized ISOs
[14:50] <xivulon> of course if all you need is a standard installation then there is no need for hooks/unionfs
[14:51] <xivulon> 2) having a universally bootable OS, based on grub4dos/syslinux + squashfs + imagefile + unionfs
[14:52] <xivulon> Wubi role is only to create said USB devices from within windows as opposed than from within Ubuntu
[14:53] <xivulon> I had a few requests for #2 more than #1
[14:58] <xivulon> evand what are the bugs/heavy lifting you refer to?
[14:59] <evand> there are a few bugs wrt the installer when you're working with a disk drive rather than a CD, like the USB disk itself being an available target to install to.  As far as heavy lifting, the tool will need to do roughly what is done in the above wiki page.
[15:01] <xivulon> is this in terms of bootloader? grub4dos can be used in such cases, and can be installed from within Linux as well
[15:02] <cjwatson> not in terms of boot loader
[15:02] <cjwatson> grub4dos not necessary
[15:02] <evand> I don't think grub4dos is necessary here.  syslinux works.
[15:03] <xivulon> did not understand the sentence "when you're working with a disk drive rather than a CD", what in particular is the issue?
[15:03] <cjwatson> we have all the necessary technology for this in place already.
[15:03] <cjwatson> we're just talking about glitches here, nothing that justifies introducing vast piles of extra stuff.
[15:04] <cjwatson> the partitioner needs to be told not to use the USB stick as an installation target, for example.
[15:04] <cjwatson> not rocket science to fix, just needs to be done
[15:04] <xivulon> ah I see, well that might turn useful for wubi too then
[15:05] <xivulon> in case we want to allow installation to existing dedicated partition (different from  the one where the ISO is sitting)
[15:08] <xivulon> for #2 I guess I still have to look at grub4dos since I do not think syslinux supports ntfs
[15:08] <xivulon> for #1 I agree there is no reason to have any wubi involvement
[15:09] <xivulon> with the exception of lupin-casper hooks that might be handy in some cases
[15:15] <xivulon> cjwatson, would you say that making squashfs rw by overlaying an image file via unionfs can create issues?
[15:16] <xivulon> I do remember that the livecd as write-to-file capabilities but must admit I haven't looked at that code in a while.
[15:18] <xivulon> ah https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCDPersistence
[15:25] <xivulon> well that is perfect, only nice to have is to be able to specify a loopback path as kernel arg
[15:42] <xivulon> cjwatson any reason why loopfile persistance is limited to vfat hosts?
[15:42] <xivulon> in casper find_cow_device
[15:42] <xivulon> I assume it is for historic reason (no ntfs-3g at the time)
[15:45] <cjwatson> sorry, I don't recall at the moment and can't get into this now
[15:46] <xivulon> Well I can easily go around that with existing hooks, and provide a special wubi build that allows people to boot off LiveCD with persistent file
[15:46] <xivulon> would something like that be desirable?
[15:46] <xivulon> And in the longer term we can of course fix casper code
[15:48] <xivulon> A couple of uses that come to my mind are: wubi-like installation with limited HD resources (1GB< free space <4GB)  and hw independent bootable USB disk
[21:03] <tmmoyer> if I am customizing the server install CD is there an automated way to ensure that all package dependencies are satisfied by packages on the CD such that I would not need an internet connection to install any packages from the CD?
[21:14] <ebel> tmmoyer: I had a similar problem and wrote a programme to get the dependencies.
[21:14] <ebel> However I'm in a mad rush.
[21:15] <tmmoyer> i'm surprised that there is not a way to do it already