SEO

Hi.

Where I work, we use several versions of Linux -- RedHat 3, RedHat 4,
CentOS 3, CentOS 4. I would like to set up a USB flash drive (memory
stick) with which to install any of the four systems.

What I envision is booting from the flash drive, being presented with a
dialog asking which version to install, and once the version is
selected to do an automated install of that version. It doesn't matter
to me whether the installation images exist as an .iso or an unpacked
directory on the flash drive.

Where can I find information relating to setting this up?

Thanks,
Bogus

At Sat, 19 Jan 2008 17:54:29 -0800 Bogus <[email protected]> wrote:

>
> Hi.
>
> Where I work, we use several versions of Linux -- RedHat 3, RedHat 4,

I assume you meas RHEL 3 and RHEL 4 and not the *original* RedHat 3 or 4.

> CentOS 3, CentOS 4. I would like to set up a USB flash drive (memory
> stick) with which to install any of the four systems.
>
> What I envision is booting from the flash drive, being presented with a
> dialog asking which version to install, and once the version is
> selected to do an automated install of that version. It doesn't matter
> to me whether the installation images exist as an .iso or an unpacked
> directory on the flash drive.
>
> Where can I find information relating to setting this up?

Look in the isolinux directory on the first CD of the distros in
question. You'll find these files (or similar):

sauron.deepsoft.com% dir /mnt/centos43/d1/isolinux/
boot.cat initi586.img isolinux.cfg* param.msg splash.lss
boot.msg initrd.img memtest rescue.msg vmlinuz
general.msg isolinux.bin options.msg snake.msg vmlzi586

Look at /mnt/centos43/d1/isolinux/isolinux.cfg -- this file is the
install CD boot configuration. You basically want to use this as a
guide to creating a bootable USB drive (i.e. with grub or lilo for
example). For example, /etc/lilo.conf on my desktop system contains
these sections:

image=/boot/vmlinuz-WBL3Install
label=WBL3Install
initrd=/boot/initrd-WBL3Install.img
append="text"

image=/boot/vmlinuz-RH73Install
label=RH73Install
initrd=/boot/initrd-RH73Install.img
append="text"

image=/boot/memtest86/memtest.bin
label=MemTest86

image=/boot/centos43vmlinuz
label=CentOS43Install
initrd=/boot/centos43initrd.img
append="text"




>
> Thanks,
> Bogus
>

--
Robert Heller -- Get the Deepwoods Software FireFox Toolbar!
Deepwoods Software -- Linux Installation and Administration
http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Web Hosting, with CGI and Database
[email protected] -- Contract Programming: C/C++, Tcl/Tk