On Fri, 2005-10-28 at 08:22, Bards1888 wrote:

...

Before you re-invent this particular wheel, you might want to check out the beta 7.x version of SME server at http://contribs.org/modules/phpwiki/index.php?Downloads which is based on Centos4.

Thanks for the link Les,

I'm set on Centos, no need for me to try SME, the main reason I like Centos is mainly do to the fact that it 'feels' like RHEL. I dont particularly want to step further away from RHEL towards SME.

What I was trying to point out was that this version of SME _is_ Centos in the same sense that yours will be, although it doesn't "feel" like much of anything since all administration is through a simplified web interface. Other than some small quirks like using qmail and tcpserver and running at runlevel 7, it is pretty much stock Centos that can update from Centos updates and have other stock Centos RPMs added.

If nothing else, it might be worth looking over for the perspective of what a group that has been doing 'appliance' Linux for years did. Their install is particularly interesting - if you install on a single-drive machine it will build a 'broken' RAID1 so at any later time you can add a second drive and easily mirror the existing install.

Quoting Bards1888 bards1888@gmail.com:

Did you see my post from yesterday (titled 'Minimal Server Install') where Johnny Hughes said he managed to get Centos 4 down to 550mb ? Also, the tip from Ash Christopher to go here;

http://www.owlriver.com/tips/tiny-centos/

is fairly useful.

The "minimal install" issue was already beaten to death several times. The above link is usefull, but instead of excluding bunch of individual packages by hand, you can simply do:

%packages --nobase

That will elimiate the base group (which would otherwise be installed by default with all its insane dependencies). Actually, after you use --nobase option, you'll find yourself quickly adding packages back, instead of removing them ;-)

Some of the packages that are not installed with --nobase option, and that you might want to reinclude are: crontabs, iptables, logwatch, logrotate, man, man-pages, ntp, openssh-clients, openssh-server, sendmail, sendmail-cf, vixie-cron and yum. Anaconda will complain about 'system-config-mouse' missing at the end of postinstall, however you can safely ignore that (or simply add the package to be installed, if you don't like seeing Anaconda complaining).

See also https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=139364

BTW, if you are installing on USB stick, note that each memory location on stick has limited number of writes (somewhere around 100k, if I remember correctly). Running OS with ext2/3 file system on it might burn some of them very fast. You would at least want to mount all filesystems with noatime option, use ext2 (no journaling, since journal will be written over and over again over same memory locations whenever there's some file system activity) and reconfigure syslog to send logs somewhere else (not write them to USB stick). I think there was an article in Linux Journal with some usefull recomendations how not tu burn your USB stick by installing OS onto it (but I can't find it right now, you might want to try searching www.linuxjournal.com).

How to install on USB stick... Hmmmm... When you boot into rescue mode (or from alt-2 console during install) and you execute "list-harddrives", do you see USB stick reported?

An workaround that might work would be installing on "real" hard drive, then copying everything to USB stick (create partitions and LVM volumes (if you use LVM)), remove hard drive, boot into rescue, mount file systems from stick, chroot into it, make appropriate changes to /etc/fstab, check grub/lilo config (whichever you use as boot loader), rebuild initrd image(s) in /boot directory, install grub or lilo into MBR. Should work. Basically, all the stpes if you were to restore machine from backup onto different hardware than original machine...

---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.

On Fri, Oct 28, 2005 at 04:46:39PM +0100, James Pearson wrote:

RedHat don't support installs on removable drives - see:

https://www.redhat.com/archives/anaconda-devel-list/2005-July/msg00021.html

But, looking at the anaconda source - in partedUtils.py at around line 833:

        if isys.driveIsRemovable(drive) and not flags.expert:
            DiskSet.skippedDisks.append(drive)
            continue

So it looks like if you boot the installer with 'expert' on the command line it may work.

I've just tried this, I can get disk druid to see the USB drive - but I did have to 'go back' and re-try disk druid before it found the USB drive - I didn't get as far as installing (I don't have a 1GB USB stick), but it may work...

An alternative to consider would be a compact flash card. with the right adapter these plug right in like an IDE disk.

I can't comment on the relative performance of this vs. a USB stick, although i'd be interested if someone else knows.

danno -- dan pritts - systems administrator - internet2 734/352-4953 office 734/834-7224 mobile