On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 11:46 AM, <m.roth at 5-cent.us> wrote: >>> >> The problem is that by the time you've written a DVD and shipped it >> somewhere everything is out of date. Just install from the Centos >> minimal CD, 'yum update', and then 'yum install _list_of_packages_' . >> Or for your own specific application, add any other required package >> to its dependencies in the rpm. I've been using that approach >> recently to upgrade some remote servers from 5.x to 6.x because it is >> easier for the remote guys who don't know much linux to get the >> network set up to a point where ssh works in a minimal install than to >> fix it up after a clonezilla or similar image copy. > > But if that's the case, why is it that I don't know a distro that's > intended to *directly* install to, say, an 8G flash drive? What isn't > everyone *assuming* that this is the way to go if you have no o/s, or 'Net > access until you install? Why is it such a freaking *pain* to build a > flash drive that boots and installs? > If you want to do something like that from the ground up you can probably find all the parts in the 'rear' (Relax and Recover) package in epel, although it is more of a backup and restore system than an installer that knows how to deal with very different hardware. Basically it is a set of shell scripts that use your systems own tools to run a backup of a live system (with an assortment of options, but tar to an NFS target is easy), plus building a bootable image (again with several options) to bring the replacement (or clone) up to a point where it can restore.the backup. It probably wouldn't be hard to tweak what goes on the boot image. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com