Fwd: Ubuntu Online Summit (3-5 Nov): Get your sessions in

[Nio Wiklund]

Hi Nicholas and Marc,
[replying inline]
Best regards
Nio

Den 2015-10-23 kl. 22:09, skrev Marc Deslauriers:
> Hi,
> 
> On 2015-10-23 03:50 PM, Nicholas Skaggs wrote:
>> On 10/21/2015 12:08 PM, Nio Wiklund wrote:
>>> Hi Nicholas and Marc,
> 
> Whoops, sorry for not replying earlier, I didn't notice the thread.
> 
>>>
>>> *Date and time*
>>>
>>> Wednesday would be the best day for me, and Thursday the second best day
>>> and Tuesday is not good at all.
>>>
>>> I don't know how to arrange a session, so I would rely on you to make it
>>> possible and book a time slot.
>> http://summit.ubuntu.com/getinvolved/propose-a-session/. You want a discussion
>> session. I can help if it's still confusing, but see below. Sounds like you
>> might not want a session anymore.

If the problems with the SDC can be solved without a session, it is a
waste of effort and time to arrange a session for it.

>>> *Content*
>>>
>>> Now that you, Marc, have started the work to revamp the SDC by
>>> simplifying it, and at the same time stating that none of the
>>> alternative installers can be accepted, I'm not sure what to discuss in
>>> such a session. Maybe something along these lines:
>> Seems you have some things to discuss, but it doesn't have to be a session if
>> you don't want it to be. Since we've settled on not changing the default, the
>> impact is certainly lessened and indeed there is less to discuss. It's up to
>> you. We should start a new thread to discuss your questions though if you want
>> to go that route. Perhaps a status from Marc would help also.

Yes, I'm glad that both of you have replied now :-)

> I did work on SDC before I went on holiday. I haven't looked at it since I came
> back, but I believe it was usable. I ripped out all the unused code, and it now
> simply copies the image to the USB device, which should make it reliable and
> able to work with all the different flavours.
> 
> I'll try and get it packaged in a PPA early next week if anyone wants to test it.

Yes, I want to test it, just tell me when it is ready for testing, and I
hope several other people will test it too.

>>> Can we decide to make the SDC reliable by removing its ability to create
>>> persistent live drives?
>>>
>>> 1. As a temporary solution to make it work again
> 
> I think this is the best solution for now, and if everyone is in agreement, I
> think I'll ask that it gets uploaded to Xenial.

+1

>>> 2. In the long perspective
>>>
>>> 2.1. Should persistence be added afterwards, when a reliable method is
>>> found (for example the method, that was developed by Andre Rodovalho and
>>> modified by me in mkusb)?
>>>
>>> 2.2. Or is it enough that the SDC is creating 'live-only' pendrives?
>>> Users who want persistent live pendrives, can be adviced to use one of
>>> the available alternatives (but they will not be included in Ubuntu).
>> I think I'm in this camp. Keep the default as simple as possible. More advanced
>> usage can advocate other tools. And there's no reason they can be packaged in
>> the ubuntu archives so they are easy to get.
> 
> I think recommending an alternative such as mkusb is probably the best solution
> too, but I don't have any objection if someone wants to add a persistence mode
> back in SDC...perhaps as a non-default option (maybe even requiring it to be
> launched with a command line option for it to show up in the GUI...).
> 
> Marc.
> 

I'm open for both of these alternatives (with and without persistence).
I have tried to get people's opinion about it at the Ubuntu Forums, but
there are not many replies or votes, and there is no overwhelming
indication in either direction. (But most votes and replies indicate
that *something* must be done with the SDC to make it work in a reliable
way.)

Maybe there will be more opinion, when your version of the SDC is
uploaded to the repo, Marc. In that case we can help deciding what to do
and maybe help doing it.

-o-

One thing we have not yet discussed is re-using the pendrive. It is more
difficult to re-use a pendrive after an iso file is cloned to it,
because there is an ISO 9660 file system, which is read-only.

There are wiping options in mkusb version 10.3. I think one of them
should be added to the SDC, the standard one, that wipes the first
mibibyte and creates an MSDOS partition table and a FAT32 partition.