Dell Recovery

Scope of use

Asked by Lantizia

Hey,

I've got two questions really. I wanted to make a Ubuntu 9.10 recovery DVD for my Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop using the dell-recovery-media utility and my understanding is that Dell don't give out pre-built ISO files any more... as every Dell machine is different - thus needs different ISOs to fix different things... so...

a) Can I run the "dell-recovery-media --builder" tool and give it the Ubuntu 9.10 Live DVD ISO for "amd64" instead of "i386"

b) Since running the tool on 9.10 is a prerequisite... Can I run this tool on any machine running 9.10 (not the machine I'm wanting to recover) and the tool will ask me which Dell machine it's making it for? It should ask - since it claims any image would be different dependant on the machine right?

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Answered
For:
Dell Recovery Edit question
Assignee:
No assignee Edit question
Last query:
Last reply:
Revision history for this message
Mario Limonciello (superm1) said : 		#1

A) Most likely yes. I've not tried it, so I don't know for sure. If it doesn't work, feel free to file a bug and can take a look at it. I don't expect it would be much work to make work if it doesn't.

B) The image can be built on any 9.10 machine. The recovery doesn't check for particular Dell machines, just that it's on a Dell machine when you try to recover the machine. There is no way to be able to pull in the additional driver packages automatically right now, so if you know that a driver package for Ubuntu is available on the media you are building, you'll have to manually grab it from support.dell.com first (assuming it's available there).

Revision history for this message
Lantizia (lantizia) said : 		#2

So this means the Dell Recovery tool in 'builder' mode will build the same 9.10 DVD amd64/i386 images every time - since it has no idea which Dell machine it is building for.

Basically Dell couldn't be bothered to host the ISO and want you to make it instead? Does this sound about right?

Revision history for this message
Mario Limonciello (superm1) said : 		#3

Yes, in builder mode with no changes the tool builds the same image each time. If you add any driver packages to the image, you can target it to a different machine.

I wouldn't say that Dell "couldn't be bothered to host the ISO". There is a concerted effort to host the delta to the standard Ubuntu ISO in a consumable form instead.

It's done this way to be extensible. Drivers and shipped applications vary from machine to machine, so it makes more sense to be able to generate images that better support different machines.

This also allows for installation bugs that are found after an image was initially generated to be fixed via updates to the factory framework which is updateble in the tool.

If you run the tool in builder mode from a factory shipped machine, you are also able to generate an image that contains drivers and applications added from that factory shipped machine.

Revision history for this message
Lantizia (lantizia) said : 		#4

OK so I'm building an image for my Inspiron 1525 from an amd64 DVD ISO of 9.10. Where do I go to view available FISH packages (and what on earth is a FISH package) for my model of Dell?

Revision history for this message
Mario Limonciello (superm1) said : 		#5

If there are packages for your platform, they'll be viewable at http://support.dell.com with your service tag added.

Can you help with this problem?

Provide an answer of your own, or ask Lantizia for more information if necessary.

To post a message you must log in.