[CentOS] Update to CentOS 6.0 without CD/DVD reader

[Timothy Murphy]

John R Pierce wrote:

> On 08/28/11 6:52 AM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
>> Now I'm wondering what is the best way to install CentOS-6,
>> given that there is no CD/DVD driver on this machine.
>>
>> I have access to the internet, so I can download the CD/DVD .
>> I know I could install through a USB stick;
>> I'm just wondering if there is a more direct route.
> 
> A) PXE boot and do a network installation aka kickstart.   This would,
> of course, require another 'nix system on the LAN running DHCP, TFTP,
> and NFS

Thanks for the suggestions.
I've always found PXEboot extraordinarily difficult to use.
I think I succeeded on one occasion, and failed on many others.
I usually tried using cobbler, but as I said with little success.

> B) boot a USB stick with the Netinstall image, and point it at a http
> URL of the centos repository, which could be either a local mirror or
> one on the internet somewhere as long as your internet is reasonably
> fast and stable.  I'd suggest doing a bare minimal install this way,
> then adding other stuff post-install with yum.

I guess this is probably the easiest solution.
I haven't downloaded CentOS-6 yet,
so I would have to download it anyway.
As you say, starting with a minimal download is probably best.

But I had hoped there was some simple way of abstracting vmlinux and initrd
from the CD or DVD image, and adding a stanza to grub.conf 
to boot from those?

-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland