Installing drivers on USB sticks

[komputes]

On 01/04/2011 05:44 PM, komputes wrote:
> On 01/04/2011 05:08 PM, Brian Murray wrote:
>> I've recently discovered hundreds of bug reports regarding people trying
>> to install drivers (bcmwl, fglrx, nvidia) on their Live USB version of
>> Ubuntu and it failing[1].  Part of the large volume is due to the fact
>> that the bug reports are automatically reported by apport as package
>> installation failures.  When looking at these bug reports I had a couple
>> of questions.
>>
>> Is installing drivers on a Live USB version of Ubuntu something that is
>> supported?
>>
>> It seems to me that there are a lot of people who think it should be and
>> I believe it would a useful way for people to test the development
>> release of Ubuntu and the latest drivers.  If it isn't though we should
>> stop the automatic reporting of this classification of bug reports[2].
>>
>> There are also some bug reports[3] that have empty
>> DpkgTerminalLog.txt[4] attachments.
>>
>> How did this happen and can it be fixed?
>>
>> Can these be marked as duplicates of bug 557023? (Provided they are on
>> live media and about installing drivers of course.)
>>
>>
>> [1] http://launchpad.net/bugs/557023
>> [2] I've written bug patterns for a couple of packages for this
>> [3] http://launchpad.net/bugs/696656
>> [4] http://launchpadlibrarian.net/61549804/DpkgTerminalLog.txt
>>
>> Thanks,
> Hi Brian,
>
> I often use full installations on USB keys.
>
> My original reason for doing this was because I was going to stores and
> looking at different hardware under Ubuntu to see what works. I was
> visiting friends and testing hardware compatability on their laptops. I
> was submitting checkbox results for machines so that they may feed the
> Hardware Database.
>
> Should this use case be supported? I would think so. Since the modules
> needed load when the appropriate hardware is detected I think it should
> be supported. I did a little research on additional drivers that don't
> come with/in the Linux kernel and posted them.
> http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1329514
>
>
> Note that I have had problems in the past with these keys. Once such
> problem occured after using a USB stick from a computer using NVIDIA
> video to a computer using INTEL video. Once gnome-session starts the
> background and gnome-panel items and letters were reversed upside-down.
> I would have thought that's X.org would autodetect hardware before
> setting up the video server.
> http://pad.lv/544813
>
> There are two other issues that come to mind with this setup:
> (Regression) This was fixed and re-appeared. When selecting to install
> to a USB key in Ubiquity, the installer installs MBR to sda (usb key
> being sdb).
> http://pad.lv/549756
Sorry, made a mistake there, that one was fixed in Lucid.
This is the correct one for the reappearance of the issue in maverick.
http://pad.lv/684292
> When ubiquity makes decisions on what it will install based on the
> hardware you are running the installer on (e.g. 4GB RAM + Net =
> PAE-enabled kernel)
> No bug reported for this. Detecting hardware in the installer seems like
> a new feature.
>
> I'm able to assist with testing and feedback should you require
> assistance with this important effort to support this use case.
>
> Cheers,
>
> -komputes
>
>   (]( -. .- )[)