Test Day:2012-04-19 liveusb-tools

Fedora Test Days
live-usbtools
Date	<<04-19-2012>>
Time	all day
Website	QA/Fedora_17_test_days
IRC	#fedora-test-day (webirc)
Mailing list	test

Can't make the date?
If you come to this page before or after the test day is completed, your testing is still valuable, and you can use the information on this page to test, file any bugs you find at Bugzilla, and add your results to the results section. If this page is more than a month old when you arrive here, please check the current schedule and see if a similar but more recent Test Day is planned or has already happened.

What to test?

Today's instalment of Fedora Test Day will focus on liveusb-tools and creating a live usb image via liveusb-tools on fedora 17 and windows liveusb-creator.

Who's available

The following cast of characters will be available testing, workarounds, bug fixes, and general discussion ...

• Development - FranciscoD (FranciscoD)
• Quality Assurance - vicodan (vicodan)

Prerequisite for Test Day

List any prerequisite needs for the test event. A fresh system, virtualized guest, a blank DVD ... a desire to break software?

• [A copy of the http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/test/17-Beta/Fedora/x86_64/iso/Fedora-17-Beta-x86_64-DVD.iso Fedora 17 pre-release x64 DVD http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/test/17-Beta/Fedora/i386/iso/Fedora-17-Beta-i386-DVD.iso i686] with all updates from updates-testing installed]
• Time
• Usb key
• DVD ISO image of latest Fedora 17 beta
• Free space on HD
• (optional) Your hardware profile uploaded to Smolt according to these instructions
• (optional) Beer (if you're adult)
• (optional) Hot dogs!

Update your machine

If you're running Fedora 17, make sure you have all the current updates for it installed, using the update manager or yum.

Preparing the USB stick

Formatting is necessary
Due to some changes in the anaconda installer in Fedora 17, it is necessary to format the USB media that you are using. This is only required when using the DVD media, not the Live media. It is therefore suggested that you use a 4-8GB pen drive and not an external hard disk since you will lose your data. See rhbz#813905

The easiest setup method is to install Fedora's own livecd-iso-to-disk script from livecd-tools. Note that the liveusb-creator GUI, however, does not support putting the DVD installer on USB. (Unetbootin has worked in the past as well, but does not currently work for Fedora 14 and 15.)

How to test?

Graphical Method - Windows only. For flashing from Fedora please use the terminal for now.

Fedora LiveUSB sticks can be created in Windows (for this test) located at liveusb-creator.

For Windows using the following steps:

• Download liveusb-creator from http://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator
• Double click 'liveusb-creator'
• Point to ISO image
• Choose Fedora 16 and x86_64 or i686 and the type of desktop you want.

Fedora / command line method:

If you are using Fedora open a terminal and run the following commands:

$ su -c "yum install liveusb-creator"

Use the "mount" command to find the USB stick (e.g., /dev/sdb1) or look at /var/log/messages or df -h to find where the stick was mounted.

Next unmount the USB stick either from the desktop icon or using the umount command - but keep a note of where the USB stick is attached to the filesystem, e.g., /dev/sdb1

Now as root run:

# livecd-iso-to-disk --format --reset-mbr --msdos path-to/Fedora-*.iso /dev/sdb

If the stick is not bootable, then refer to the information below to make it bootable, otherwise this command will fail.

You should now have a bootable USB stick which will run a Fedora install. When you boot the stick, you may also add askmethod to the boot line and select a hard drive install and select the drive as /dev/sdb1 (or your USB device drive) and the path should be /

The remainder of the install should be the same as for using a DVD in an optical drive, but when you select options make sure that you select your disk partitioning carefully if you are doing custom partitioning and also make sure that the bootloader is installed on the correct drive - by default it will be installed on the USB stick so you will need to change it to the master boot record on the hard drive.

Test Results

If you have problems with any of the tests, report a bug to Bugzilla for liveusb-tools. If you are unsure about exactly how to file the report or what other information to include, just ask on IRC and we will help you. Once you have completed the tests, add your results to the Results table below, following the example results from the first line as a template. The first column should be your name with a link to your User page in the Wiki if you have one, and the second should be a link to the Smolt profile of the system you tested. For each test case, use the result template to enter your result, as shown in the example result line.

User	Smolt Profile	Flash USB with DVD ISO 64/32bit in Fedora	Boot from USB drive flashed in Fedora	Flash USB drive with DVD ISO 64/32bit in Windows	Boot off USB drive flashed drive in Windows	References
Sample User	HW	none	pass	warn	fail
vicodan	[Virtualbox Fedora 17 x64 VM]	inprogress	inprogress	inprogress	inprogress