[CentOS] CentOS-5.5 Live CD & netinstall

[Les Mikesell]

On 4/7/2011 8:14 AM, Markus Falb wrote:
>>> I thought I did that a long time ago.  Put the small boot.img file that is
>>> in the /images on the CD or DVD isos on a USB drive (you can use a
>>> loopback mount to get it if you can't find a place to download it
>>> separately), boot from it, pick nfs as the install method, and point it to
>>> the directory containing the CD
>>> iso images that you have under an NFS export on another box.
>
> ...
>
>> But when I said "simple" I really meant
>> "following official methods and instructions given by Them,
>> the CentOS powers-that-be".
>>
>> I assume that the lack of a CD drive on the HP micro-server
>> is a sign of things to come,
>> so I would hope there would be an official method of installing CentOS
>> on such a machine.
>>
>
> I think what Les suggested is one official supported method as outlined
> in the Installation Guide. How "official" do you want it ?

Here's the prompt you'll see and what it means:

http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html-single/Installation_Guide/index.html#s1-begininstall-nfs-x86

> I prefer PXE, but thats also not "simple", and not possible in every
> environment, colocations for instance.

There is one quirk about USB booting that I forgot: it is likely to 
confuse the installer's concept of disk names and where to install grub. 
  I do nfs installs all the time because it is quicker/easier than 
swapping CDs in machines that don't have a DVD drive, but I normally 
burn the first disk and use 'linux askmethod' at the boot prompt.  But, 
if grub isn't automatically installed right automatically, you can get 
into a shell with ctl-alt-F-something (F2 or F4, I think) and fix it 
before rebooting, or you should be able to boot even the boot.img into 
rescue mode - you just have to point it at the media again.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com