lubuntu-qa team mailing list archive

[Jonathan Marsden <jmarsden@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 06/01/2013 04:28 PM, Phill Whiteside wrote:

> as usb creator seems a bit broken at present, putting an iso onto a
> usb drive to check that the installer works is handy as it does not
> need people to keep burning CD's / DVD's (Images often go over sized
> between milestones). I've just been told that at least one of lubuntu
> saucy images is now over sized.

Well, yes, OK, USB sticks are convenient (but not actually necessary)
for testing on physical hardware.  But isn't that somewhat irrelevant to
testing on virtual machines?

If you are using VirtualBox or KVM for testing, then you do not need any
physical removable media at all.  No CDs.  No DVDs.  No USB sticks.  You
download the ISO file to your host hard drive, and you tell VirtualBox
that your test VM wants to use that file as a virtual CDROM.  Job done.
 No burning optical media or copying to USB sticks is needed whatsoever.
 Both the drive and the optical media are virtual, just like the test
machine itself.

So, my question remains.  Is there really a need for USB stick access
for Ubuntu ISO testing, in particular for ISO testing using VMs?

I am getting the impression that the answer is probably "no", but given
the wiki pages that currently suggest adding the Extension Pack for this
exact purpose (direct access to USB sticks from a VM), I would prefer
someone who really knows confirm that impression, before I write and
teach a classroom session about using VirtualBox for Ubuntu ISO testing
that says "don't install the Extension Pack because you do not need it" :)

Now, if we need to test that these "hybrid" ISOs really do boot from USB
stick as well as from optical media, then logically we would have a test
case for testing that, which has to be done on real (non-virtual)
hardware.  But (rather oddly!) I do not see such a test case anywhere.

Jonathan