RHEL6 beta LiveCD

Posted by Patrice Guay in CentOS LiveCD      3 comments

Jul
16

In April 2010, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Beta distribution was made available. This new distribution from Red Hat is a good indication of what should be available in the upcoming CentOS 6 distribution. Since then, I have been working on a LiveCD for this distribution. As usual, the code required to reproduce my results are available from within the CentOS LiveCD project webpage.

Screenshots

Here are two pictures taken during the boot process of this LiveCD. Syslinux is still used to mimic a GRUB interface at boot time. Several options are given including a graphical installation through anaconda. The default boot option will take you to the Gnome Display Manager where the an automatic login has been configured.

The Gnome desktop interface is shown in the pictures below. Gnome has been updated to version 2.28 and Firefox 3.6 is now included. Red Hat has kept a similar menu item organization compared to the previous distribution release while the newer version of Gnome provides updated tools and functionalities.

A graphical installation program is available directly from the LiveCD desktop. The different steps involved in the installation process are shown below. This installation mechanism is similar to the one available from the LiveCD boot menu. The main difference between this installer and the standard one available from the regular installation media is the lack of a package selection option. The installation mechanism of the LiveCD will copy the content of the LiveCD directly to the selected storage device. The resulting installation will therefore only include the software already available from the LiveCD.

Conclusion

The LiveCD creation process for the upcoming CentOS 6 distribution is working great. Additional features like the long awaited installer should be available.