dracut-loopmount

Created
Was maintained by meeuw
Dracut loop mount package
git clone

DESCRIPTION

Using this package you can boot Fedora from any filesystem which can be written to from Linux (without any repartioning) using external boot media which can be removed when the boot is finished.

The advantage is that you use your internal harddisks performance instead of slow USB/DVD storage and you can remove the media after booting so you can use your DVD drive / USB port.

PREREQUISITES

  • Linux needs to be able to write to a filesystem image on the target filesystem from dracut, like NTFS, Ext4 or XFS.

INSTALLING

  1. Create an image of at least 8 GB. This can be done in Linux using truncate -s 8G /loop.img or from Windows using: fsutil file createnew /loop.img 8589934592 or from Mac OS using: mkfile -n 8g /loop.img
  2. Download and boot Fedora Live (from https://getfedora.org).
  3. Start a terminal and install dracut-loopmount: - sudo -i - dnf enable meeuw/dracut-loopmount - dnf install dracut-loopmount
  4. optionally install NTFS module with write support: - dnf enable meeuw/ntfs-kmod - dnf install ntfs-kmod kernel-devel-$(uname -r) - akmods
  5. Run dracut-loopmount helper using: - dracut-loopmount --root UUID=aaaaaaaa-bbbb-cccc-dddd-eeeeeeeeeeee --boot LABEL=usbkey
  6. Reboot using the external media, install dracut loopmount in new root - sudo -i - dnf enable meeuw/dracut-loopmount - dnf install dracut-loopmount
  7. Update loop mount, update kernel - dnf update kernel-core - dracut-loopmount --boot=LABEL=usbkey --kernel=4.16.15-300.fc28.x86_64 --kernelmodules=xfs - dracut-loopmount --boot=LABEL=usbkey --kernel=4.16.15-300.fc28.x86_64 --kernelmodules="hfsplus nls_utf8"