A bite late, but with some thoughts (at least I  think). I'm starting at the top as there was a lot of stuff and some very technical and probably not something for the 1st release.

I was thinking that somehow Unetbootin ( http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ ) was actually doing that, and that it's more a matter of building a custom UI and letting organizers prepare offline ISO and files and let them customize that UI. This way the tool would be somewhat distro independent and enable to do what we need (probably with some limitations, but it'd be a quick start).

unetbootin seems to be well documented, especially on writing plugins and customizing the app, and it's cross platform even!

What do you think?

Fred

On 09/05/2013 07:14 AM, Julian H. Stacey wrote:
From:		Frederic Muller - DFF <fred@digitalfreedomfoundation.org> 
On 09/04/2013 07:25 PM, Julian H. Stacey wrote:

Likewise we have asked Canonical (somewhat involved in the Freedom
Toaster)

I didnt know what that was so for others:
	http://www.freedomtoaster.org
	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Toaster


whether they were aware of a USB burning Kiosk able to burn ISO
files and add other files to the same USB drive. While we just started
the discussion if someone knows anything or has any idea please share
with us.

Too big a topic to solve in time for SFD this year.
One would need to define aims tighter, eg define to what format,
& discard the "and add other files to the same USB drive:
as it drags in a mass of consequential questions:

  What do you want the OS of the copier to be ? (A divisive question
  in itself ;-) Linux ? BSD ? Other ? Which version ?  

Big topic I agree, which will probably raise a lot of debates ;-). While
I don't have any preferred choice I don't want an OS that gets outdated
in no time. And of course it has to be Free Software. Still vague, but
let's say that it won't be Fedora as the one-year support is too short.
A Ubuntu LTS eventually, Debian or maybe you have some suggestion and
better knowledge (that shouldn't be difficult) on the BSD side.

A few FreeBSD release have extended lifetimes, inc.  the last minor
release upgrade number at the end of a previous major release number
series, eg , 8.4 estimated end of life: June 30, 2015, although 9.1
estimated end of life earlier: December 31, 2014
	http://www.freebsd.org/security/security.html#sup



        

          
But necessary
  as one gets heavily into assumptions of content & what it should
  boot, & which scripts to use for lots of .iso to usb methods, &
  the commands those scripts will call, use some of the (I presume)
  most non standard differential per Unix tools.

	eg try http://ixquick.com with 
	freebsd .iso to usb
  for a hint of various methods.
  I use FreeBSD's mdconfig command to manually manipulate my .iso over to USB
	http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=mdconfig&amp;sektion=8
	http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/disks-virtual.html#idp88166064

  What target media format ? 
  	- Retain [or re-assert ?] (as typical from shop) USB with MBR 
	  for 4 OS, 1st slice using all blocks.
	- Or use as raw USB stick for 1 Bootable OS ?
	- What sort of boot ? (Linux nobbles disks' boot in ways BSD
	  doesnt like) Stick to just MBR best, but note newer FreeBSD
	  now likes Geom stuff, MS has aso long nobled the boot
	  too.  (Even CDROM .iso had 2 ways to boot). Boot opens a
	  can of worms.


        

        
I'm not enough knowledgeable to make a mindful decision. I didn't think
we could have more than 1 thing booting from the USB but if we can why not?


      

      
Yes :-).
The USB stick that lives on my key ring (so if flat burns down I still
have data, has:

fdisk /dev/da1
	The data for partition 1 is:
	sysid 11 (0x0b),(DOS or Windows 95 with 32 bit FAT)
	    start 63, size 2056257 (1004 Meg), flag 0
	The data for partition 2 is:
	sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
	    start 2056320, size 7984305 (3898 Meg), flag 80 (active)
	The data for partition 3 is:
	sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
	    start 10040625, size 6201090 (3027 Meg), flag 0
	The data for partition 4 is:
	sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
	    start 16241715, size 2961 (1 Meg), flag 0

It auto mounts as 
	/devusb/delock.dos on /media/delock.dos (msdosfs, local)
	/devusb/delock.bde on /media/delock.ufs (ufs, local, noatime, soft-updates)
	/devusb/delock.os on /media/delock.os (ufs, local, noatime, read-only)
	/devusb/delock.end on /media/delock.end (ufs, local, noatime)
	
	/devusb/delock.bde@ -> /dev/da1s3.bde
	/devusb/delock.dos@ -> /dev/da1s1
	/devusb/delock.end@ -> /dev/da1s4a
	/devusb/delock.os@ -> /dev/da1s2a

done by
http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/src/bsd/fixes/FreeBSD/src/jhs/etc/devd/jhs.conf
	P1 is 1G of DOS scratch space for import export when visiting MS people
	P2 is 4G encrypted BSD FFS personal data
	P3 is 3G FreeBSD Bootable OS inc lots of extra rescue stuff I added.

I have used stick to boot a PC, one could then use it to copy to
another stick.  Old laptops dont boot off USB though.  & sometimes
there can be an issue with device numbering.  Then there's issues
like "will your USB Unix X11 config recognise my X11 hardware?" (If
an X11 is wanted) Those X11 issues have probably been adressed by
http://knoppix.de (a bootable Linux CD)

Maybe I should later put up my USB image for people to try,
(a sanitised version without my personal stuff :-)




      

        

          
  FS on USB ? FAT32, Linux Ext23/ BSD-FFS NTFS, or several slices ?
  (you wrote you want to "add other files")


        

        
The "add other files" was in  the case of a typical non-free OS users
interested to get a Free OS and some applications for his non-free OS.
So it'll have something he can boot from


      

      
P3 3G FreeBSD in my case




      

        
and also a place where it will
be able to retrieve those applications that do not require booting from.


      

      
P1 1G DOS FAT32 in my case


      

        

        

          
I've made my own bootable FreeBSD stick, & grafted on other stuff,
It's also easy with FreeBSD to write a bunch of cd9660 .iso files
to a fat32 USB stick, then use the mdconfig command to convert
each .iso to a node, & then mount each cdrom .iso image simultaneously.
I presume its just as easy on Linux, with probably different commands.


        

        
Yes and no. Depending on the ISO you can or cannot dd, you can or cannot
easily put on a USB disk. So while I was thinking to have something
generic and each team download the OSes of their choice we will hit a
limit there. Likewise reading ext4 from Windows (for "add other files")
will be a tricky thing obviously requiring to use FAT32, or so I think.


      

      
My brother who uses MS wrote me recently:
	"I have also downloaded a free utility for Windows that
	enables read/write to an Ext 3 drive."
No idea what it was or if open src or not.



      

        

          
But ...
The average end user recipient of such a stick probably will not
have the skills to easily deal with it.  A lot of recipients of
cdroms couldn't do much more than insert & push reset ;-) If we
make it too complex it wont be useful to more than a small minority
who could do it all on a laptop with a few friends anyway using OS
& other options of mutual choice, (& then they'll also be there to
answer phone in same city when someone calls "Er, what was content
order of that unique collection of extras you gave me, how do I
extract install boot").

Distributing pictures or source archives, it's easy to write
them as files on a FAT32 USB stick, But if we want to also deliver
bootable op systems etc, we're best confining that to one per stick,
with nothing else on stick.


        

        
Yes, I totally hear you here. Well we need a "nice" UI to select what to
put on the stick, probably with some exclusive choices but still
configurable by the SFD team and then maybe a roadmap for the "upcoming
features".


        

          
No problem using multiple stick anyway, cos people can re-use them,
& force them to buy their own stick at shop round the corner !

If we give out sticks with free s/w, people will just erase the
software & keep the stick anyway.


        

        
I think so as well. Besides I think everyone has a USB stick at home and
it's just a matter of letting them know that they should bring it
around. On the organizers side it's just one PC with USB port(s)...
manageable. As I said before giving away USB sticks unless someone wants
to get rid of them is just to costly to be worth it (the same amount of
money will probably do much better things "elsewhere").


      

      
Yes, once I manned a free software stand & got asked by kids "what
have you got that's free ?" & they didnt mean software but anything
- Locusts !



      

        

          
Cheers,
Julian


        

        
So was that a bit clearer?


      

      
Yup :-)



      

        
Thanks for the follow up, really appreciate.


      

      
:-)



      

        
Fred


      

      
Cheers,
Julian