Installing LMDE from a non-live (already installed) system

[bobafetthotmail]

I was curious to know if it was possible to trigger the installer from inside an LMDE I have already installed in a PC so I can install the same stuff on another drive I can then move to another PC.

So far I usually get away by imaging a partition and then changing the host name (and users/passwords) in the clones, but I was wondering if it was possible to do this, maybe parallelized on multiple drives at once (connected to the same PC).

It would be a half-decent way to get around the fact that LMDE isos get horribly outdated and that doing an install and then tweak all stuff and update (from an apt proxy of course) and then tweak some stuff again still takes ages. Imaging is ok, but I was looking for something better.

But I don't really know if it is feasible or not. Don't want to move around custom configs or anything, just install LMDE system at latest update and possibly do so on multiple drives at once.

[killer de bug]

You could have done this using mintConstructor but this tool is no more available...

By the way new iso will be available, probably next week

[bobafetthotmail]

I asked about how to install LMDE to a drive connected to a PC running LMDE, not remaster an iso. UP8 is going to become outdated eventually and I was trying to find a better way to get around the fact that Clem doesn't release new iso so often.

Some time ago I did try customizing Mint live-cds with the Ubuntu's own iso remaster tool (mostly for lulz) but it didn't work out, and had very little incentive to find out why and what to hack to make it work. (also little skill in the field)

Might try to give another go, this time with Debian's own iso building tool, cuz' it's Debian.


Since i'm not a fan of reinventing the wheel every few months, I would like to make a "network install" iso.
That is, a crappy small-ish iso whose point is just booting, running the installer and/or gparted and pulling down the packages from the internet or a local server.
Debian has network-install isos.

Any good reason Mint Debian cannot have an equivalent? Maybe I'll find out on my own. Maybe I won't understand even the basics of what goes wrong.