[CentOS] CentOS-5.5 Live CD & netinstall

Fri Apr 8 19:50:26 UTC 2011
William Hooper <whooperhsd at gmail.com>

On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 2:31 PM, Timothy Murphy <gayleard at 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.

-- 
William Hooper