[YLUG] Test version of f14 install iso available

[mike cloaked]

As some of you may know I have been building DVD install isos for
Fedora for some time.

Recently I have upgraded my old build machine so that it can build f14
DVD isos, and I ran the first test build in the last couple of days.
If anyone is interested these are at:
http://bioltfws1.york.ac.uk/ylug/F14/

Currently the latest published official install isos for F14 are the
beta release that was build by Fedora on 21st September, so my current
build is about two and a half weeks beyond the official beta release.
Last night I used my iso to install f14 on a laptop. The install
worked for me without issue, and the new install booted up into
firstboot, and then into the new system, without any problems on my
test machine.

If you are into playing at the cutting edge then you can burn the DVD
iso to a physical DVD and boot it to initiate the install. Or, if you
want to be more experimental, you can prepare a usbkey to run the
install - if you want to do this (and it should work for any recent
Fedora install iso), then do the following to make a bootable DVD
install usb key (it must be at least 4GB to be safe on space - note
that my isos are rather smaller at around 2.2GB than the official isos
because I only include language support for English):

1) Copy the iso of interest to your machine already running a recent
(f12 or more recent) version of Fedora.

2) Plug in a usbkey formatted with a fat32 single partition and marked
bootable, and then unmount the the partition (usually will be
/dev/sdb1)
so as root:

# unmount /dev/sdb1

3)  Then, still as root in a terminal, ensure that you have the
"livecd-tools" package installed, and execute, after adjusting the
reference to where you have your iso file:
livecd-iso-to-disk  --reset-mbr
/path-to/Fedora-14-20101007-i386-DVD.iso /dev/sdb1

You should get output similar to:
Verifying image...
/path-to/Fedora-14-20101007-i386-DVD.iso:   a064ad670c0839d1089282469b67dec6
Fragment sums: ff16bb74ee334a8a628634811364d56bbcb694595b797571e32f5b486eb4
Fragment count: 20
Checking: 100.0%

The media check is complete, the result is: PASS.

It is OK to use this media.
Size of DVD image: 3450
Size of install.img: 152
Available space: 7696
Copying DVD image to USB stick
then some messages saying that the MBR was wrttien...


Then boot the stick and start your install.
One very important point if you are installing from a usbkey, which
has caught out many folk, is that as you go through the installer
pages and select options, when it gets to the bootloader selection it
will default to writing to the MBR on the key and not on the internal
drive of the machine you are installing to! (This means the new system
can't boot) - SO you have to select "Switch Device", and then select
the First BIOS drive to /dev/sda (typically, which is the internal HD)
and the Second BIOS drive to /dev/sdb which is the usbkey - then
continue with the install and the grub bootloader will be written to
the MBR of the internal drive as the last action when the install is
about to complete.... then allow it into firstboot, and set a new user
and then the system should work fine.

However remember this is still a pre-release system so not every
package you install will necessarily work 100%. However all of the
standard things I tested worked fine....

Fedora f14 is due to be released on November 2nd, so about 3 weeks
away - once we reach general release I will build updated versions of
F14 final - and will periodically build updated versions through the
f14 cycle.

Anyway I hope this helps if you are running the bleeding edge - if not
please feel free to press the delete button!

-- 
mike c