Douglas McClendon wrote:

I thought some of you might like to know-

The latest version of zyx-liveinstaller (0.1.15) now supports the CentOS-5.4 LiveCD/USB.

Actually I just put out 0.1.16, which in addition to being noarch, also fixed a problem when installing to rootfs on non-lvm partitions.

The other reason I'm replying to this, is the PS at the end about syslinux's menu.c32 vs vesamenu.32, turns out to be a result of livecd-iso-to-disk using the burning host's syslinux. I.e. if I burn my LiveUSB from centos-5.4 instead of 5.3 or fedora, the grey screen bootloader problem doesn't show up.

-dmc

http://filteredperception.org/smiley/projects/zyx-liveinstaller/

This is a ~100kb rpm that can be installed in a running LiveCD/USB session. Once run, zyx-liveinstaller will then allow you to install the running system permanently to system-disk.

This is like the anaconda/liveinst installer available with the Fedora LiveCD/USB, except-

a) it works _rebootlessly_! After installation completes, you simply eject the LiveCD or remove the LiveUSB and continue using the now installed system.

b) it is still relatively immature, but gets the job done (as far as I've tested). Installation to external usb drives also works.

c) it can easily be included in a custom CentOS LiveCD spin, without the downside of having to have an unsupported version of anaconda on the system.

d) it is a fairly simple pygtk frontend for a bash backend. In fact, all you really need is the single bash script /usr/sbin/zyx-liveinstaller-cli.

NOTE: that like the Fedora LiveCD installer, it is a *destructive* install. Target partitions/volumes get reformatted.

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To do a commandline installation with no seperate /boot partition, the rootfs on /dev/sda2, and the swap partition on /dev/sda3, you would just run-

rpm -Uvh \ http://filteredperception.org/downloads/zyx-liveinstaller/zyx-liveinstaller-...

zyx-liveinstaller-cli \ /dev/sda2 /dev/sda2 /dev/sda3

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Note, that if you throw a copy of the 100kb rpm inside the LiveUSB version of CentOS-5.4, you have a totally portable offline installable version of CentOS. This is definitely not as seriously usable as the traditional DVD installer on bootable USB form, but might have its uses.

Bugs, comments, criticisms, and feedback are encouraged.

Now that I've got this working, I'll really get to work helping Patrice crossport my old LiveUSB persistence patches to Fedora-8/9 to CentOS-5.*.

peace...

-dmc

P.S. To get CentOS-5.4 LiveUSB to boot on my acer aspire one, I had to change the syslinux.cfg line of 'vesamenu.c32' to 'menu.c32' (and copy menu.c32). Otherwise an unusable and very grey syslinux bootloader. Hopefully just a problem with this netbook.

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