InstaLinux.com
This is just going to be a quick post... I came across a fairly cool website earlier today and thought I should share it with everyone. InstaLinux.com. The concept is fairly cool. They provide a list of several Linux distros and you build yourself an automated install CD...
The Process:
Visit the website (homepage shown above) and click the "Let's Get Started" link.
Select your Linux distro and provide an IP (if required)... The Distro list includes:
- CentOS
- Debian
- Fedora
- Scientific
- SuSE
- Ubuntu
They are all available for various architectures... and several versions of each are available. I'm going to select SuSE 10.1 (i386) to continue with.
On the next page you select System Profile (Current only Custom is available), Install Method (here you can choose CDs or HTTP -- I'm going with HTTP), Boot Image (SuSE ISO), Network Interface (eth0) and Proxy (Should you require a proxy for HTTP access).
The next page allows you to setup Localizations... Time Zone, Languages, Keyboard and Mouse Type, etc...
Now it's time for the fun stuff.. Package selection.. In the case of SuSE, you select the base that you desire and then specific packages... There's also a box where you can provide specific RPMs should you know the names of the packages you desire. The last thing on this page is to select our partition type... I'm lazy and don't know the disk size of the PC I'm going to install this on so I went with Autopartition.. it creates swap and / and nothing else. Simple would have prompted me to provide a partition table into a series of text boxes.
This is a crucial step... The selection of your disk... I selected IDE0:0.. since VMWare supports IDE drives and all my spare PCs have IDE Drives... ensure that you select the correct drive for your PC.
The final step, which includes confirmation of some general information that I've specified also prompts me for the final bits of information:
Root Password: cdoSuSE
Username: CDOUser
User Password: cdoUSER
VNC Password: cdoVNC
Now we just have to click "Go For It!"
And Voila!... We have our completed ISO... Which is only 9.5MB. The nice thing is that I can pop this into my CD-ROM or attach it to VMWare and walk away... I don't need to sit and click through... and all it took was about 5 minutes on InstaLinux.com.
Download the ISO (CDO-SuSE) (Note: I haven't actually attempted to install this yet... I'm going to throw it in a VM tomorrow... however I'm on a Mac at the moment, so I can't test it.)