[CentOS] CentOS-5.5 Live CD & netinstall

Fri Apr 8 12:58:26 UTC 2011
Timothy Murphy <gayleard at eircom.net>

Markus Falb wrote:

>> Yes, my memory isn't that great, but it is in the install guide:
>> http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/Installation_Guide-en-
US/ch02s04.html#id3098219

I did try the dd method again, but it didn't work for me.

> My memory isnt great neither. There is a boot.iso mentioned including
> the use of dd but only in the Installation Guide for 6.0 (2.3 Making
> Minimal Boot Media)

I also tried installing boot.iso on my USB stick,
using livecd-iso-to-disk ;
on re-booting, the USB stick was seen by the computer 
but only ";" appeared on the screen.

> Back to 5...
> 
> It seems that the link on centos.org is an outdated copy. Have a look at
> 2.4.1. Alternative Boot Methods in
> 
> http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-
US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/Installation_Guide/ch02s04.html#sect-
New_Users-Alternative_Boot_Methods
> 
> A more manual way to make usb stick bootable is described instead.
> Maybe you have more luck with that.
> dd method is not mentioned anymore.

Thanks for that.
This method did work, although there is an error in the description,
which slightly confused me.
If you follow the instructions as given,
grub-install creates directories /boot and /boot/grub on the USB stick.
But then the boot fails with "File not found",
which seems to make sense, since you are told to put "root (hd1,0)"
in grub.conf .
I found that after creating a top directory grub/ on the stick,
and copying /boot/grub/* to this it booted my HP microserver fine,
and I could go to NFS install.

(I actually already have CentOS-5.5 installed on this machine
using the CentOS Live CD on a USB stick,
and pressing SPACE at boot-time to get a list of options.)

So this seems to be a viable method, which should work
even when the Network Install option is removed from CentOS Live CD
as we are told it will be. Why?

(I tried adding a suggestion to this effect in the CentOS bugzilla,
but there doesn't seem to be any option there for "Live CD".)


-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland