Jerry Geis wrote:

Hi all,

I am trying to find information on taking a DVD of centos 5.2 x86_64 and putting it AND my kickstart file on a USB8G thumbdrive.

Note - I am not INSTALLING linux on the USB disk just trying to make installation media for it. I am not taking just the bootdisk.img file to make the USB bootable but the entire DVD content on the USB and my kickstart files.

I'd like to just be able to plug in a USB disk that I have made that has all the kickstart information and the machine is just setup based on WHICHEVER usb thumbdrive in place in the machine.

Is there something out there that explains this that I have not found?

Maybe things have changed in 5.x but I recall some annoying issues with having a USB device plugged in during kickstart as the kernel would sometimes map that device as sda and that could screw up my partitioning scheme. I think it would be easier to put the kickstart file on the DVD and have a different DVD for whatever purpose you want, unless you anticipate needing to change the kickstart file frequently.

Same goes for having external SCSI or fiber channel devices connected during kickstart, I always disconnect all block devices other than the boot device whenever possible when using kickstart.

That is assuming your looking for a fully automated installer, vs loading kickstart with minimal configs and doing a bunch of manual work during installation.

nate