replacing the Startup Disk Creator

[Nicholas Skaggs]

On 09/19/2015 07:29 AM, Marc Deslauriers wrote:
> On 2015-09-19 07:04 AM, Nio Wiklund wrote:
>> Hi Marc,
>>
>> My standard ISP's mail server is down. So I tried to send this mail via Google's
>> web mail interface. In my saved version of the mail, there is an attachment
>> "SCC-test.ods", size 17692 bytes. I'll try again ...
>>
>> Best regards
>> Nio
>>
> That's a very interesting spreadsheet, thanks for doing that. It seems most
> issues are:
>
> - A known bug in udisks that prevents the erase function from working reliably
> (LP: #1460602)
>
> - A mismatch between syslinux versions between the host system creating the usb
> key and the version being installed (LP: #1325801)
>
> - A limitation of the fix for the syslinux issue that prevents amd64 images from
> being created on i386 systems (LP: #1446646)
>
>
> I believe a simple way to eliminate every one of these issues at once in UDC
> would be to get rid of the persistence functionality. All of the currently
> supported images can now be written directly to a usb device as-is.
>
> The syslinux and boot loader mangling that is currently required for persistence
> and used to be required for older end of life releases is a constant source of
> problems each time a new release come out and is difficult to get working
> properly on mismatched architectures.
>
> Removing persistence would also simplify the user interface and would remove the
> need of having the "Erase Disk" button, therefore eliminating the known udisks
> issue as a side effect.
>
> Advanced users who require generating a usb key with persistence can simply use
> one of the other tools that are available. Perhaps in the future persistence
> could be added back by creating a partition in the free space left over after
> copying over the image.
>
> Changing UDC to remove persistence and to copy images as-is is a trivial change,
> and I am willing to volunteer to do it.
>
> Marc.
>
>
Marc, this sounds like a great way to accomplishes two things at once. 
It both simplifies the application for users,  while making the process 
more robust. I'm in support.

Nicholas