Installation to USB

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Peter Smulders

I have an old laptop that needs CloudReady, but is not concerned with performance. Problem is that it lacks a working hard drive. I currently have it running of an installer USB stick, which is sort of OK, but not quite. I would like to install to a USB stick.

First thing I figured out is that my available sticks are max 8GB, which is too small. So I got a bigger one, which is running into other problems. After wiping the file system, I still get a fatal error, but I believe it is a bug in the installer script. The command I used is

$ sudo /usr/sbin/chromeos-install --yes --skip_dst_removable --dst /dev/sdc

and the traceback points to:

subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['/usr/bin/cgpt', 'show', '/dev/sda']' returned non-zero exit status 1

The laptop I am doing this install in, indeed has a HDD (/dev/sda) but since it is not mentioned in the installer command, the installer script has no business looking there. So... what gives?

 

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  • Peter Smulders

     

    I believe the bug is either in

    /opt/neverware/cgpt_reader_guy.py:main

    for not honoring the command line argument destination or

    /opt/neverware/disk_util:choose_destination_device_path

    for not even considering it.

    Now, this machine has a HDD in it. According to choose_destination_device_path, it is trying to determine the optimal target and defaulting to /dev/sda is it can't. In this machine, /dev/sda is indeed the optimum target, but it is NOT what I specified!

    Any developers care to pitch in?

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  • Peter Smulders

    To reiterate the point: I took out the HDD from this machine and the installation proceeded without problems, suggesting that the mere presence of a HDD is enough to throw off the installation procedure.

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  • Aimee Schulhoff

    There is currently no advantage install to a USB since OTA updates are disabled for theses devices. Expand the user partition on an installer USB is easier & accomplishes the same thing...a system that can't be updated.

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  • Phil Reilly

    OTA updates on a USB installation would really be great!

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  • Peter Smulders

    "since OTA updates are disabled for [USB] devices.'

    I wasn't aware of that. Does anyone know if that is switcheable? USB devices are dreadfully slow compared to even spinning metal disks, but the advantage I see is being able to revive a laptop with a busted hard drive for a little over €10 instead of €30 or more for a new hard drive. Also, keeping a USB stick with me on the go means I can boot from it on many different devices and have a portable working environment wherever I go, with accounts set up and caches primed.

    I suppose I can sort of do the same with the installer, but afaik that runs of a compressed volume and is even slower.

    Addendum: I just looked up HDD prices and they have come down so far that I think I might be optimising for the wrong thing. Oh, well. Interesting exercise nevertheless.

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