On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 2:31 PM, Timothy Murphy gayleard@eircom.net wrote:
Phil Schaffner wrote:
Because network installs tend to be problematic for all but those with local repositories or flawless broadband network connections. Having it present was raising unrealistic expectations of netinstall as a viable option, and resulting in bad first experiences with CentOS and a large support burden.
That seems completely misguided to me, since it is perfectly simple to use with the DVD ISO on a local machine. Why not simply warn people if you think a local ISO is the safest way?
The alternative dd method described in the CentOS Installation Guide (but not the RedHat one) does not appear to me to work, and the only other way I see to install CentOS on a machine without a CD drive (the method described in the RedHat Installation Guide) is absurdly long-winded.
Forgive me if I've missed it mentioned, but it looks like the option is only being removed from the LiveCD. Using the netinstall.iso is still available and would be a more efficient way of doing network installs anyway (9.5M vs 685M).
Unless things have changed since I messed with network installs (which is has been a while), all you really need is some way to boot the kernel and initrd files. It doesn't matter if you start with grub, lilo, syslinux, etc. I remember using the boot loader of an existing system to start the network install (but I don't remember what version it was) on a machine without a working optical drive.
The issues you saw with grub being installed on the USB stick instead of the HDD are a bigger concern in my book. I wonder if you you have better luck installing GRUB on the HDD MBR, booting from the HDD and using grub to load the kernel and initrd off the USB stick.