[Bug 653633] Re: live-media=<device> is no more supported in casper

[RawwrBag]

I've run into this issue as well. I'm writing a custom Live CD that
boots over PXE using memdisk, and I was banging my head against the wall
watching casper just search for "nice" block devices rather than using
my image. At the very least, take it out of the man pages:

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/precise/en/man7/casper.7.html

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/653633

Title:
  live-media=<device> is no more supported in casper

Status in “casper” package in Ubuntu:
  Won't Fix

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: casper

  From Changelog:

  casper (1.77+debian-1) unstable; urgency=low
  +
  +  ......
  +  * Added boot parameter "live-media=<device>" to force trying to boot from
  +    a specified device.

  From man casper (casper_1.246_i386.deb)

  {live-media|bootfrom}=DEVICE                                             
  If you specify one of this two equivalent forms, casper will first try to find this device for the "/casper" directory where the read-only root filesystem should reside. If it did not find something usable, the normal scan for block devices is performed.

  But from some time ago, this feature has disappeared.

  In /usr/share/initramfs-tools/scripts/casper, in the function

  parse_cmdline ()
  {
      PRESEEDS=
      # looking for casper specifics options as kernel parameters
      for x in $(cat /proc/cmdline); do
          case $x in

  these two lines are no more here

             bootfrom=*|live-media=*)
                  export LIVEMEDIA=${x#*=} ;;

  But it seems that support for this feature still exists partially:

  find_livefs() {
      timeout="${1}"
      # first look at the one specified in the command line
      if [ ! -z "${LIVEMEDIA}" ]; then
          if check_dev "null" "${LIVEMEDIA}" "skip_uuid_check"; then
              return 0
          fi
      fi
      # don't start autodetection before timeout has expired
      if [ -n "${LIVEMEDIA_TIMEOUT}" ]; then

  Actually, more often, this interesting feature never worked well
  because the misplaced timeout make the only one try to use
  ${LIVEMEDIA} too early, before USB are ready, so few people noticed
  its disappearance.

  I suggest restoring parse_cmdline () and moving check_dev "null"
  "${LIVEMEDIA}" after time-out

  Ph.L.

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