Installing drivers on USB sticks

[komputes]

On 01/04/2011 07:04 PM, Brian Murray wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 04, 2011 at 11:53:54PM +0100, Martin Pitt wrote:
>> Hello Brian,
>>
>> Brian Murray [2011-01-04 14:08 -0800]:
>>> 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].
>> There are two main reasons for this:
>>
>>  - update-initramfs not working (http://launchpad.net/bugs/557023)
>>
>>  - There is too little RAM on a live system to download, build,
>>    install, and run large drivers like nvidia and fglrx. Therefore
>>    these should be disabled on a live system. This is tracked in
>>    http://launchpad.net/bugs/685017, and I'll fix it for alpha-2.
>>
>> It would still be nice to fix 557023 so that this at least works with
>> smaller drivers like broadcom-wl (this doesn't actually need
>> an initramfs update, I believe, but it might happen anyway).
>>
>>> [3] http://launchpad.net/bugs/696656
>> Duped.
> This was an example of a whole class of bugs that have been reported in
> Launchpad.  Is it also safe to make those duplicates of bug 685017?
>
> Thanks again,

These issues and limitations of casper stop users from having a
persistent, updated clone of an ubuntu CD image using usb-creator.

I have seen many complains that updating using a key (built with
usb-creator) causes the key to be non-usable afterwards. I use
usb-creator for the purpose of installing to computers via USB, not
running a full installation with the ability to update the kernel.
usb-creator works, it does what it's supposed to and fits the purpose of
making a USB installer. However, since the image contains update-manager
which will inevitably check for updates, we are setting up the user to
mess up their system because of live environment limitations. How can we
correct this or at least minimize the chances of someone updating? How
can we make it clear that there is a difference between a USB CD clone
and a USB installation?

Personally, I do not face any of these issues since I use ubiquity to do
a full installations to a USB drives. I believe that this use case
should also be tested and supported.

Cheers,

-komputes

  (]( -. .- )[)