[ros-dev] Fwd: 'Portable ROS'

[Jason Filby]

Hi all

See the mail below; I'll forward any comments on.

Personally I think the best solution would be able to have ROS
identify drives connected via USB and install directly onto such
drives.

Cheers
Jason

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Konrad Strachan <treeonthemountainside(a)gawab.com>
Date: Jun 4, 2005 2:28 PM
Subject: 'Portable ROS'
To: jason.filby(a)gmail.com

Dear Jason Filby, 

I have been experimenting for a while with putting whole operating
systems of removable drives for the purpose of booting a portable OS
and interface anywhere. I have been able to do this with ReactOS, but
it is much harder. The reason is the manner in which ROS distributions
are released. Unless 0.3.0 differs from the last few releases, all
that will be released is a CD iso image to install onto a hard drive
and Qemu emulation image. Whilst these would suit most of the people
who are interested in playing with ROS, it makes it very difficult to
make a portable version. I initially experimented with taking the boot
loader from the install CD and using the emulation image (and various
other permutations..) , but I have not been able to make it work. The
only way I have been able to make a working portable image is through
actually burning the iso image and installing ROS onto an old hard
drive, taking that image including the boot sector, and writing it to
a USB drive. This worked but it was a very roundabout way of doing it.
Furthermore, it is not a case of grafting the new distribution onto
the boot loader I have already taken from the previous installation
due to various changed in the boot loading code with the release of
0.2.6. What I am asking, is that you make available the boot loader
from the installed version of the software with each release in an
image file. I think a lot more people would be drawn to ROS if it
could be used in this manner. Please let me know what you think and
keep up the excellent work :p

Warm Regards 

Konrad Strachan. 

http://treeonthemountainside.cjb.net 

http://www.users.totalise.co.uk/~konr/bootlinux.html