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This seems like a silly question, and I apologize if I'm overlooking something obvious. I can't figure out how to install CentOS 5.5 My experience in Linux thus far is mostly Debian-based distros (Ubuntu, Mint, etc.), for all of which the Live CD is the install cd and installation is rather painless. This seems to not be the case with CentOS.

In any case, I downloaded the CentOS 5.5 x86_64 bin-DVD parts 1 and 2 from a torrent, and verified the md5 sum against the centos website. On a mac, right-clicked on the ISO for part 1 in finder and chose "burn ISO to dvd". But the server I'm trying to install it on won't boot from this disk.

Previously, someone had burned the CentOS LiveCD onto the same kind of dvd, and the server boots from this fine, so I doubt it's a problem with the dvd reader or the dvd itself.

Do I have to do something special when burning the ISO to dvd to ensure that it makes a bootable dvd? Or are the 2-part CentOS dvds not intended to be bootable? This seems very unlikely...

BTW, I'm trying CentOS 5.5 because we're running a Hadoop cluster where the existing machines are running this OS so I wanted to play it safe. I realize 5.5 is no longer officially supported, though, so if there are good reasons for switching to 6 (I'm assuming it won't cause compatibility issues in the cluster, since Hadoop is running at the JVM level anyway) I'm open to it.

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Do you see any kind of error message? – user859955 Dec 7 '11 at 20:20
I believe CentOS 5.5 still has a few years of support left. CentOS releases are officially supported for 7 years; even if you count those 7 years from 5.0, that gives you through April, 2014. – BRPocock Dec 7 '11 at 20:35
You shouldn't need to do anything special to the iso to create a bootable disk. See if you can boot it on the mac, or some other machine (there is no risk with just booting the disk to the existing OS). – Paul Dec 7 '11 at 22:52
@Paul Thanks, I couldn't imagine I would have to do something special. I guess it was a problem the burner or the dvd or something. I ended up booting from the live cd and doing a netinstall. – danny Dec 8 '11 at 16:00
@BRPocock Good to know, I won't worry about updating to 6 in that case. – danny Dec 8 '11 at 16:01
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migrated from stackoverflow.com Dec 7 '11 at 20:36

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2 Answers

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The CentOS live CD has a "net install" feature. If your machine is connected to internet, you can install CentOS from the live CD.

More info:

To "net install" from a Live CD, let the BIOS boot from the disc and then hit any key when you see the bootloader (during the countdown that says "Will boot automatically in 10...") and you can choose "install over network". CentOS hosts http://vault.centos.org/5.5/os/x86_64 that has the correct net install image and all the necessary packages. Connection is relatively slow depending on how many packages you're installing, but all the other mirrors I can find only have CentOS 5.7 and 6.0 as of this posting.

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This is what I ended up using. I edited your answer to add more details in case others are trying to install from a live cd and choose to go this route. – danny Dec 8 '11 at 16:12
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There are some very clear and concise instructions for how to burn a bootable CentOS 5 disc on the CentOS 5 website including performing a burn from Windows. Good luck.

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