Fedora BootAnaconda
This guide will tell you how to launch the Anaconda Fedora 7 installer without using any external media. Some requirements:
1. Must be running Fedora already
2. Since there is no external media, a network install is the only way to do the install itself. You'll need a network connection. Wireless won't work.
3. A network source for the Fedora release files. This can be one of the official mirrors or an http or ftp mirror you set up yourself or a SAMBA or NFS share with the Fedora 7 isos on them.
The first step is to install the fedora-bootanaconda rpm package for your architecture. Currently only i386 and x86_64 architectures are supported. This may change in the future.
rpm -ivh http://folk.ntnu.no/sindrb/fedora-bootanaconda-7-1.fc6.<code>uname -i</code>.rpm
This will add the necessary files and set up the boot loader for you. Now simply reboot and from the GRUB boot screen select "Install/Upgrade Fedora 7".
Anaconda, the Fedora installer, will now boot and ask you for which method of network installation you want to use.
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I usually do upgrades via Anaconda by copying the vmlinuz and initrd.img from the isolinux dir on the install media to my /boot and then adding an entry to /etc/grub.conf to boot into Anaconda and do the Upgrade.
Today I decided that replacing this manual process by a rpm file containing the files with the necessary scriplet shebang for the grub stuff would be a better idea.
Some questions though:
Is this usable for anyone but me?
Can this be distributed in Fedora, can it be distributed by me? Am I doing something wrong by repackaging the binary initrd.img and vmlinuz files?
Multi-arch: My initial idea was to just create one tarball per arch and have them in the spec as Source0, Source1 and so forth and use arch macros in the spec to determine which tarball to use on which arch. Does anyone have a better idea?