DNFPayload couldn't deal with USB Mass storage install media in USB-ZIP mode.

[slayercat]

With CentOS 8.x we found anaconda will boot but couldn't install from a USB stick -- it complains about "Error setting up software". Even through DRACUT_REPODIR (/run/install/repo ) is mounted.

Making a USB-ZIP mode install will create a partition formated in FAT32 in USB stick, copys all content of iso to the partition. UltraISO takes care of this. And UEFI will boot from that partition.

A further dig founds that, in commit 8a3c118, authors removed the class PackagePayload. In the good old days, _setup_cdrom_device() will check the baby and do a repo setup for us. however, in commit 1e00603, this baby-sitter has been retired.

I'm suggesting to hire a new nanny to care with the DRACUT_REPODIR. Because it's really annoying. Especially CentOS 8 requires a huge offline iso file (8 Gib).

Thanks.

[jkonecny12]

Hello, if I'm not mistaken you are creating the USB stick with Rufus tool which unfortunately creates unsupported partitioning layout as I already explained here. In short the problem is that your tool for creating the ISO will change the structure and does not use ISO9660 format which is part of the ISO.

We have a plan to solve this another way, however, as workaround you should be able to just use inst.repo instead of inst.stage2 which would tell Anaconda to not care about the partitioning and use that source as the installation source. And yes, our idea is similar to what you are proposing.

This change happened because Anaconda switched from the old code to a new solution, where we are trying to avoid re-using mounts from Dracut. We did that to avoid pretty complex logic to decide where to mount what and in what circumstances. Now the sources have a strict logic which is easy to follow and the code is nicely separated. Unfortunately, we were not aware of tooling which changing the ISO structure.

[slayercat]

Thanks for your quick reply.

Yes. this tool (UltraISO) changes the structure of file by design. However, If we may suggest, How about change device_tree.FindOpticalMedia to FindMountablePartitions ? We have not found a reason to restrict install media to a miserable dvd rom.

Thanks again.

[jkonecny12]

Hi @poncovka what do you think about the proposal. I have a feeling that we already thought about that but I can't remember why we don't want to do that.

[slayercat]

we have made a prototype for the idea, and made some test in an offline machine. see #3599 for details.

If you feel that patch is valuable, we'll fix that unittest failure.

Looking forward to your comments and opinions. Thankyou.

[jkonecny12]

Thanks for the prototype, we will definitely look on the solution. 👍