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Automatically Installing Linux from Bootable CD?

Posted by Cliff on from the insert-wait-and-go dept.

phorm asks: "While there are newer many distributions of linux that come bootable from CD, I've found that some are a bit difficult to customize and wonder how hard it would be to create my own. Currently we are looking at replacing some of our Windows desktops at work with Linux test-machines - and it would be nice to make the installation process as simple as possible. How hard would it be to create a bootable CD that would automagically install Linux onto the first detected hard-drive? How would you go about 'imaging' an existing machine to use as the base? I suppose that in many cases a tar-gzip of the entire OS would work, provided you could partition the drive correctly, recreate some important handles as in /proc, and run lilo/grub to install a boot loader. Does anyone here have experience with this? I know morphix/knoppix make nice bootable distros but what I really want is a basic Linux bootCD which installs a preconfigured version of the OS of my choice."

6 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. Knoppix by lortho · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Knoppix live CD distro comes with a script for installing to the hard drive that works pretty well, just go to a root console after booting off the cd and type 'knx-hdinstall'. It probably wouldn't be too hard to customize the disk so that it does this automatically.

  2. Check support databases by MrResistor · · Score: 4, Informative

    I found this with a simple search of Suse's support database. I just skimmed it, but it seems to lay out the whole procedure. I'm sure your distro of choice has a similar page. While I haven't tried this myself, I know people have been doing it with Red Hat and Mandrake for years.

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  3. Kickstart by baywulf · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can do this with Redhat Linux (or Fedora.) It is basically a utility called kickstart that creates a configuration file that you can place onto the cd or a floppy. Then when the install takes place, it will automatically make choices based on the configuration file.

  4. Don't use CDs by hbackert · · Score: 5, Informative

    If possible, use the network. If those PCs have PXE to boot from, that is by far the easiest and customizeable way to install lots of Linux machines. Using RedHat's kickstart, I can install a basic server in about 5 minutes, plus 5 minutes to configure everything for that machine. It's thus faster than CD and easier and easy to customize. No need to burn a new CD.

  5. Use Kickstart. by Thalin · · Score: 4, Informative

    As a couple other people have said, Kickstart is probably your best option. I work at NCSU and we have a bunch of linux machines. When we need to upgrade or reinstall, we just take a boot cd, pop it in, and let it go. It grabs all the configuration and install files off our kickstart server and goes to town. When it's done, the system reboots and sits at a login screen, no other config required. It's a beautiful thing.

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  6. Catalyst by Shwag · · Score: 4, Informative

    The new gentoo image creation program, called catalyst, does exactly what you are looking for.