On Jun 25, 2014, at 18:36 , Konstantin Olchanski wrote: > On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 11:15:13AM -0500, James Fait wrote: >> >> I recently received a new server system that has Centos 6.5 installed on it. >> I would like to change that to a Scientific Linux 6.5 system without having >> to do a full reinstall, as this has no external media access except for the >> network. >> > > > If your computer has a USB port (and can boot from USB), you can use my USB > installer to do a vanilla or kickstart install SL6.5: > http://trshare.triumf.ca/~olchansk/linux/SL65-64-USBBOOT/AAA-README-USBBOOT.txt > (download tarball is two levels up). > > If you have infrastructure for network booting (dhcp+tftp+pxelinux), it is > trivial > to network-boot the SL6 installer and install over the network. (I find the > speed of > USB install and network install to be about the same).
You don't even need any that infrastructure. Just retrieve kernel+initrd from images/pxeboot using wget, stuff them in /boot, and construct an appropriate grub entry. This way you can either start a fully automated kickstart installation or an interactive one (for which you need console access). > I personally recommend a reinstall to: a) avoid creating a mongrel system > maybe hard to maintain long term, > b) removes all doubt about "who knows what was running on the computer before > you got it" and > generally gives you a clean slate to work with. Agreed. -- Stephan Wiesand DESY -DV- Platanenenallee 6 15738 Zeuthen, Germany
