Subject: [alpine-devel] USB creator for windows

From: Natanael Copa <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 12:00:46 +0200

Hi,

I wonder if someone could have a look at patching
universal-usb-installer[1] with official alpine linux support?

I looked at the sources[2] and it looks fairly straightforward, but i'm
too lazy to set up a windows box to test it.

Or should we fork liveusb-creator[3]?

In any case, it would be great with an official windows tool to build
bootable Alpine Linux USBs

Thanks!

-nc

[1]http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/
[2]http://www.pendrivelinux.com/downloads/Sources/USB-Installers/Universal-USB-Installer/Universal-USB-Installer-1.8.6.8-src.zip
[3]https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/

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From: Kiyoshi Aman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 06:19:51 -0400

> bootable Alpine Linux USBs

No real need; unetbootin[1] does the job just fine and can use
existing CD media as a base.

1. http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

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From: Natanael Copa <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 13:27:00 +0200

On Fri, 14 Oct 2011 06:19:51 -0400
Kiyoshi Aman <[email-masked]> wrote:

> > In any case, it would be great with an official windows tool to
> > build bootable Alpine Linux USBs
> 

Would be nice to add Alpine Linux as an official[1] supported distro for
unetbootin. AFAIK there are no usb creators that has official support
for Alpine Linux.

Also, a gui for an alpine linux desktop would be nice, preferible
something that does not depend on qt.

[1] http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/#features

-nc

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From: Paul Onyschuk <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 12:28:28 +0200

On Fri, 14 Oct 2011 13:27:00 +0200
Natanael Copa <[email-masked]> wrote:

> 
> Would be nice to add Alpine Linux as an official[1] supported distro
> for unetbootin. AFAIK there are no usb creators that has official
> support for Alpine Linux.
> 

openSUSE uses some kind of trick in a way, that LiveCD ISO can be
written to USB as raw image e.g. by dd tool (Image Writer can be used on
Windows machines).  This is by far best and most flexible solution I'm
aware of.

Still I don't know how they do that and how much work would be
required to get this feature to Alpine Linux.

-- 
Paul Onyschuk <[email-masked]>

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From: Natanael Copa <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 14:09:55 +0200

On Sat, 15 Oct 2011 12:28:28 +0200
Paul Onyschuk <[email-masked]> wrote:

> written to USB as raw image e.g. by dd tool (Image Writer can be used
> on Windows machines).  This is by far best and most flexible solution
> I'm aware of.
> 

They probaly use isohybrid/syslinux. We talked about that for some time
ago. What i don't like with that approach is that:
1. you always loose all contents of your USB stick (users might want
save a stored apkovl)
2. we use FAT and fat cannot expand. So there will not be any (or fixed
only) size for saving other data on the USB.

Theoretically, what we have is pretty simple too:
1. unpack files from iso (7zip works)
2. make it bootable (run syslinux.exe and fdisk /mbr or dd mbr.bin)

We even have a uniso tool that is able to unpack the iso on the fly.
You can 'curl $url_to_iso | uniso' and at the time the iso is
downloaded the usb is done. setup-bootable in alpine uses this.

What I'm after is something like, instead of downloading Image Writer
and an alpine iso image you simple download a alpine-usb-creator tool
which downloads and creates the usb in one shot. It would also be nice
with a (gtk) gui for this in linux.

-nc

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