Debian style net-install ISOs (from FudCON Raleigh)

[Michael DeHaan]

At Matt Domsch's talk at FudCON some of us got into an interesting tangent.

Fedora could really use Debian style net install ISOs.

For those unfamiliar with the concept ... assume a minimally sized image 
that is enough to start up a net install for all content.

Now imagine the bandwidth savings -- you're not downloading anything you 
don't need.   For most Debian users I knew, this is the way we always 
installed systems.

Imagine something like the rescue image (heck, this is only a slight 
tweak) with the following modifications:
   1.  a kickstart file on it that is set up for a network installation 
(everything else interactive)
   2.  the kernel options pre-modified to use that kickstart file
   3.  the network install source of a tree on 
download.fedoraproject.org (which is geoip magic)
   4.  and yum repos for updates (so installs can be done to updated 
content) that understand how to use yum mirror lists.
       (only the last part (4) seems to require any sort of software 
change)

Currently I am not aware of the ability to express mirror lists in a 
kickstart file (pykickstart doesn't like em?) but I know Anaconda can do 
this.

Debian actually had you enter in what mirror you wanted (I always picked 
kernel.org), but we probably have a even smarter solution with 
download.fedoraproject.org.  

What else do we need to get this going and hosted?

I imagine the bandwidth savings for Fedora could be huge, but even more 
so, the users in bandwidth-constrained environments wouldn't have to 
download a full DVD (not even DVD 1) to get going.

Thoughts?

--Michael