Best way to get minimal system

[Bill Davidsen]

Tim wrote:
> On Tue, 2010-01-05 at 16:11 -0500, Bill Davidsen wrote:
>> My solution to installs for little machines is a box I got from
>> Newegg, has a USB connector and PATA inside for old drives (SATA
>> available as well), and I install on a real computer with lots of
>> resources, even if I'm running on next to nothing.
> 
> To transplant the drive to another computer?
> 
> I've done that, but you have to beware that you can install a system
> that won't work (without some fiddling) on another computer.  I've been
> lucky that there was only a minimum of fiddling required, but it's
> possible to create a system that can't read the hard drive, and you need
> to know how to rebuild the initrd to resolve it.
> 
I'm reminded that I built a disk image of the proper size on a KVM virtual 
machine, and then used the adaptor and dd to do the "install," with seek time 
issues minimized by a pure sequential write. THat was KVM from cli, I have no 
idea if you could do that from any of the GUI tools.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot