A question about the "how to make it work" issue of my week.

[Oren Beck]

Shortest summary is:

I am trying to get a drive image-for want of better semantics- that
will be a plug in-power it up-and it goes to a working desktop with
net if possible- needing near to zero human input.  There are
obviously non trivial parts of the process. Yet- let me explain how
the query came about. A friend came over earlier this week bearing the
HD from his Gateway P133 Win98 old system. In an attempt to copy files
onto backup media- the drive was accidentally installed as primary
master. Which of course resulted in a failed attempt by windows to
boot hardware it lacked information about. Which caused a query.
How can a Livedistro be replicated onto a HD? The simple elegance of a
pre-imaged drive that on initial boot acts identical to Knoppix etc
for autodetection and bringing up a functional net connected if
possible browser. Think it over a moment as to what is and NOT
involved. The two prime factors desired here are an ultimate "it just
works" function level. And having it do so absent other than trivial
human interaction wherever possible.

Sounds a bit non-trivial at first but is it really that hard? Here's
my current "missing links" list.

What is the best tutorial for remastering Live distros in overview?

What is recommended for scripting automatic local identification thru
IP or whatever. IF there was a comparatively painless way to automate
the "where am I in the world?" issue- several set up queries in the
dialog go away.

Can anyone direct me to an explanation of how/why an installed from
Live distro seems to lack the auto detect on startup properties ?

And yes- I have been asking around about some parts of this a while.
and Google etc seem not to be yielding good enough to use data.

-- 
Oren Beck

816.729.3645