CentOS 6.4 Install Issues

I've always liked to build things (especially when there's no real purpose) and that's why I knew my life would be once again more complete with a dedicated Linux box. You think I'm joking right?? Wanting a box that consumes less power, small but still with enough horse power to actually do something useful, I found a cheap Dell Optiplex FX160 on eBay.

After a bit of research, it seems the distro of choice for Linux pro wanna-bes these days is CentOS. With no CD drive on the FX160, I downloaded the Live CD version (CentOS-6.4-x86_64-LiveCD.iso) and used the provided livecd-iso-to-disk script on another Linux system to create a bootable USB install disk.

Unwanted X Window System: My first issue was how to not install X. It seems it's not possible using the LiveCD version of CentOS 6.4. So I tired the Minimal version (CentOS-6.4-x86_64-minimal.iso) which allowed me to avoid X however the equivalent livecd-iso-to-disk script isn't contained within the image so you'll have to download both images anyway.

Bad drive assignment: The next annoyance was that my newly created "Minimal" USB install disk was being assigned sda and that is kinda bad. This didn't happen with the LiveCD version. With the system disk being assigned sdb, I was greeted with a kernel panic once I tried to boot the new system without the USB install disk plugged in.

Resolution came when I swapped the USB install disk for one of those 4-in-one card readers with the Minimal image now installed on an SD card. The installer assigned the card reader something other than sda (in fact it had several drives assigned--none of which were sda) and so the system booted flawlessly after installation. Incidentally it also booted flawlessly once I plugged in the old USB install disk as it was no longer being assigned sda.