[CentOS-devel] Idea for single CD install

On Fri, 2006-09-15 at 10:30 -0400, Charlie Brady wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Sep 2006, Karanbir Singh wrote:
> 
> > Shriramana Sharma wrote:
> > 
> >> Single CD installs will go a long way to popularize CentOS, IMHO.
> >
> > There already is a Single CD installer, with a default Server Mode selection, 
> > but nothing stops you from doing a minimal install and then yum groupinstall 
> > 'GNOME Desktop'
> 
> Lack of readily available bandwidth might. Try it over 14.4k dialup if you 
> have doubts.

There are any number of ISO sellers for people to purchase ISOs from for
situations like that.

It is not possible to provide all the content on the liveCD on a single
anaconda installable CD.  (The liveCD is nearly 2GB in size and made
smaller by squashfs/unionfs.

The purpose of the LiveCD is:

1.  Bootable to test hardware/software ... test if you like the look /
feel of CentOS before installing.

2. Bootable as an emergency rescue disc.

In both cases, it is not designed to be installed to hard drive OR be
supported as an Official CentOS install.

While it is possible to install it to hard drive by following the
directions on the SLAX site, I do not necessarily recommend that.

It will work, and you can get updates if you properly configure your
system ... however, it does not use the standard CentOS init scripts
which causes things like hostname changes, root and user passwd changes,
X11 detections and configuration every boot, hardware detection and
configuration every boot, etc. that are based on the fact that it is
designed to boot from CD on different PCs every time it is used.  The
whole boot process is sub optimal and take longer that the standard
CentOS boot process.

If you fixed all those issues, it would work fine installed to the
drive, however, just installing CentOS by one of the supported methods
is much easier. 

Thanks,
Johnny Hughes
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-devel/attachments/20060915/793ec297/attachment-0001.sig>