Install to USB script?
Posted: 21 Jan 2011, 15:57
I was thinking last night that, if possible, it might be useful to have a script that would automate the installation of Porteus to a USB drive, from a CD.
For example, the standard Porteus .iso file could include a script saved as a module that is only loaded when Porteus is run on a CD (put in /porteus/optional and loaded with the load= cheatcode). This module would place an item on the desktop, called "Install Porteus to USB Drive" or something similar.
Upon double clicking, the script would open a console, prompt the user to plug in a usb device, detect the device's location (e.g. sdb), inform the user that they are about to install Porteus on device sdb (if details about the size and brand of the device could be given to verify it's the right device to the user, that would be great), then copy /boot and /porteus from the cd to the specified device and finally, run the bootinst.sh script on the device (if it could also detect the device's filesystem and run a script to install extlinux if it's a linux fs, that would be great, too, but this would mostly be for windows users).
Now, personally, I'd still rather manually move the files and run the install script myself, but new users (especially windows users) may be a little intimidated by finding a way to extract the files from an .iso file and running an install script through windows. Burning a CD, rebooting, and clicking on an icon would be easier, and would provide an end run around all of the administrative privilege issues in Windows.
Of course, this is an idea coming from someone who doesn't know how to script (or if scripting this is even possible, without potentially hosing the user's MBR on occasion)....
Thoughts?
For example, the standard Porteus .iso file could include a script saved as a module that is only loaded when Porteus is run on a CD (put in /porteus/optional and loaded with the load= cheatcode). This module would place an item on the desktop, called "Install Porteus to USB Drive" or something similar.
Upon double clicking, the script would open a console, prompt the user to plug in a usb device, detect the device's location (e.g. sdb), inform the user that they are about to install Porteus on device sdb (if details about the size and brand of the device could be given to verify it's the right device to the user, that would be great), then copy /boot and /porteus from the cd to the specified device and finally, run the bootinst.sh script on the device (if it could also detect the device's filesystem and run a script to install extlinux if it's a linux fs, that would be great, too, but this would mostly be for windows users).
Now, personally, I'd still rather manually move the files and run the install script myself, but new users (especially windows users) may be a little intimidated by finding a way to extract the files from an .iso file and running an install script through windows. Burning a CD, rebooting, and clicking on an icon would be easier, and would provide an end run around all of the administrative privilege issues in Windows.
Of course, this is an idea coming from someone who doesn't know how to script (or if scripting this is even possible, without potentially hosing the user's MBR on occasion)....
Thoughts?
the less painfull for TOTAL newbies installing porteus the quicker we'll catch up with other distro 8)