make information for installing Ubuntu from a USB flash drive easily accessible

[Alexander van Loon]

On Sun, 2008-04-20 at 15:55 +0800, Onno Benschop wrote:
> On 20/04/08 15:36, Jerone Young wrote:
> > I think what he means is adding a page that is easily accessible to
> > you know .. the average guys. These are not on any of the offical
> > pages. Would be nice (and probably more environmental friendly) if
> > more users knew that you could use a USB key to install.
> >   
> After hitting send I realised that my contribution to the list and
> Alexander's request was not as constructive as it could have been. For
> that I apologise. Your follow-up email offers me the opportunity to
> remedy that.
> 
> The first step to an "official" page is to create an "unofficial" page.
> I should also point out that the gap between "official" and "unofficial"
> is almost arbitrary in the age of integrated search engines. If you
> present a page that contains a well documented and thoughtful process,
> that is peer reviewed, that contains test cases and follows
> documentation standards, then your "unofficial" page will be of a
> similar reach and utility to your intended audience.
> 
> Perhaps you and Alexander should join forces and create a page
> documenting the process on the wiki.
> 
> Once the document has been drafted and once you've had a few people test
> it and comment on it, you might present the completed page here and ask
> the question again. I suspect a more fruitful path is that you might
> discuss your drafted page with the documentation team.

Jerone, that was exactly what I was trying to write, apparently I
couldn't explain my idea clearly enough. As Onno says, perhaps we could
collaborate?

Onno, thank you for advice to discuss this with the documentation team.
I will post to their mailing list and ask them, initially my goal when
posting this e-mail to the devel-discuss list was to get a green light
from the developers/documentation writers or to see if they were
interested.

On Sun, 2008-04-20 at 10:40 -0400, Mackenzie Morgan wrote:
> The page is right here. It just needs to be linked to on the main
> download page so users know it exists.
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick

Obviously when you were reading my e-mail to the list, you missed that I
already included a URL to that page on the Wiki. I also mentioned that
page isn't simple enough, the whole section describing how to do it
manually can be removed because the script is easier. My idea is that a
better page should be written.

On Sun, 2008-04-20 at 11:29 +0200, Paulus Esterhazy wrote:
> I agree that this is important. Installation from USB pen drives has
> been a curiously neglected installation method, given that it doesn't
> require a blank cd, or an optical drive (think small notebooks).
> 
> There is a nasty bug in gutsy that causes the installer (ubiquity) to
> leave bogus lines in /etc/fstab. The installer evidently thinks that
> it's installing from a regular CD drive, and adds a line containing
> the
> USB disk's device (say, sdc) and the specified file system iso9660 to
> the fstab. If you subsequently plug in a pen drive, GNOME mount tells
> you that there is an "invalid mount option", as the cdrom mount
> options
> don't fit together with mounting a usb stick. Forums are teeming with
> reports of this bug.
> 
> I couldn't find out if this is still present in hardy. This report
> seems
> similar, and it hasn't received much attention:
> 
> https://launchpad.net/bugs/150872
> 
> Thanks,
> Paulus

I haven't experienced it yet because I haven't attempted to actually
install from a USB flash drive yet, I just tried if I could get my USB
flash drive and Ubuntu on it to boot. I will try it within a few days
however, and report if I'm affected by that bug. Thanks for mentioning
this.