A few days ago I was preparing a microSD card (with a USB adapter) to install Haiku on several machines, and I had an idea: is it possible to create a partition to save the installation ISO, and use it when needed?
It would be useful to re-install on the same machine, in case something goes wrong, or simply to upgrade to a newer version.
Would it be possible to do something like that?
i see there is a application named Installer after i install haiku into my computer.
you can use the application.
for upgrading , maybe use these command
pkgman add https://eu.hpkg.haiku-os.org/haiku/master/x86_64/current
pkgman full-sync
shutdown -r
Yes, I know.
That program works fine when the operating system works fine, but I was referring to something similar to the Windows boot menu (accessed by pressing F8), or the Android one, from where you can do a “hard reset” and stuff like that.
The idea I had is more like “a menu to access to fix Haiku when everything goes terribly wrong”.
But without needing an external installation media.
Please refer to the section of this note from the following page:
Every time packages are updated, installed or uninstalled (either with SoftwareUpdater/HaikuDepot or in Terminal via pkgman), a new “state” is saved at /system/packages/administrative/. This makes it possible to boot into any past state from the Boot Options, making it easy to solve issues that may arise from having installed/updated a package that doesn’t work as expected.
As these “state” folders hold copies of the updated/uninstalled packages, the “administrative” folder can grow quite significantly over time. Until there’s an option for an automatic clean-up, it’s a good idea to check the size of the “administrative” folder from time to time and remove the oldest states, that you probably won’t have to boot into again.
Pulled from this page:
https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/applications/softwareupdater.html
If that is not helpful, there is also a way to mount ISO files from within Haiku and use them as a drive. Maybe this idea: Mounting Images - #8 by humdinger
or this idea:
Install nightly to partition - #9 by humdinger
Install Haiku again! The installer should not touch the home folder with your documents!