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Old 01-22-2008, 11:35 AM
Robert Heller
 
Posts: n/a
Default Re: Using a USB flash drive to install multiple versions?

At Sat, 19 Jan 2008 17:54:29 -0800 Bogus <bogus@bogus.bogus> 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
>


--
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