On Jun 25, 2014, at 18:36 , Konstantin Olchanski wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 11:15:13AM -0500, James Fait wrote:
>> 
>> I recently received a new server system that has Centos 6.5 installed on it.  I would like to change that to a Scientific Linux 6.5 system without having to do a full reinstall, as this has no external media access except for the network.
>> 
> 
> 
> If your computer has a USB port (and can boot from USB), you can use my USB installer to do a vanilla or kickstart install SL6.5:
> http://trshare.triumf.ca/~olchansk/linux/SL65-64-USBBOOT/AAA-README-USBBOOT.txt
> (download tarball is two levels up).
> 
> If you have infrastructure for network booting (dhcp+tftp+pxelinux), it is trivial
> to network-boot the SL6 installer and install over the network. (I find the speed of
> USB install and network install to be about the same).

You don't even need any that infrastructure. Just retrieve kernel+initrd from images/pxeboot using wget, stuff them in /boot, and construct an appropriate grub entry. This way you can either start a fully automated kickstart installation or an interactive one (for which you need console access).

> I personally recommend a reinstall to: a) avoid creating a mongrel system maybe hard to maintain long term,
> b) removes all doubt about "who knows what was running on the computer before you got it" and
> generally gives you a clean slate to work with.


Agreed.

-- 
Stephan Wiesand
DESY -DV-
Platanenenallee 6
15738 Zeuthen, Germany