[CentOS-devel] LiveCD suggestion

Sun Jun 6 23:15:53 UTC 2010
Douglas McClendon <dmc.centos at filteredperception.org>

On 06/06/2010 07:29 AM, Patrice Guay wrote:
> Douglas McClendon wrote:
>>
>> One more related installer suggestion, is zyx-liveinstaller.  This is
>> just me shilling my own project that has yet to gain serious traction,
>> but I still find rebootless livecd installation very cool, and it is
>> just 100kb or so.
>>
>> Executive Summary: Like traditional fedora livecd installer, except
>> instead of copying just the readonly livecd filesystem image to the
>> target and then rebooting, it uses devicemapper mirror tricks to copy
>> that image, as well as the live ram overlay into a new normal filesystem
>> on disk, which is then already running for real, sans the need to
>> reboot.  Only 'real' difference is that until the next reboot, your
>> rootfs is accessed via a dm-linear layer
>
> The main issue I see regarding a live installation process is the fact
> that the LiveCD has been stripped from several files in order to reach
> the 700MB target. Language and documentation files are removed to give
> some space for OpenOffice.org. As a result, the LiveCD environment is
> different from the one obtained via the normal installation process.
> While this should not make a difference for English-speaking users,
> others may be confused by the missing files. This could result in more
> load for the support channels as they will have to explain why package
> xyz installed via the LiveCD is different from the same package
> installed via RPM.

I didn't know, but am not surprised, that you've had to make those kind 
of cuts (fedora has held a pretty tight line and avoided such cuts, but 
also can't squeeze in openoffice).  Fair enough.

-dmc