Is it possible to boot standard RHEL from a Compact Flash device? Seeing that there are now 16GB device available.

Where, might I find information about doing this? Web searches haven't been fruitful, as has the Red Hat web site.

Thanks!

It is surely possible. If you are talking Live Distro style, RHEL would probably not be your "target" distro. If you are wanting to use the device instead of a real Hard Drive, you should be able to get by with a regular install, the only hiccup I'd think you would hit would be the boot loader, might have to forego a nice grub splash. One of the how-tos I found helpful:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/liveusb.xml

-Chad

Yeah like a Live CD, but Compact Flash. I want to boot the OS on a diskless X86 box. I also have a custom application I want to run from the same Compact flash, once the OS has booted.

Piece of cake right?

I wouldn't necessarily say "piece of cake" but definitely not a "piece of mushrooms" FYI, mushrooms are disgusting and taste very nasty.

It is rather easy though if you follow some good documentation. And as long as you realize there may some diversions from a typically install, such as setting up Syslinux instead of Grub or Lilo (or maybe in addition to if you use a universal boot loader).

One other thing, diskless == no swap "drive". I run some truly diskless systems at home (running MythTV over network boot) and I had some major problems at first that ended up being due to low RAM. I upped to the MAX the systems could handle (Epia systems with 1GB) and the problems seem to have pretty much gone away. I stripped down my kernel too, this helped to ensure as little RAM as possible was being used so that when something RAM intensive needed it, it would be there.

-Chad

Agreed...mushrooms bad.

I'll have 1GB of memory.

If not using RHEL, is there a better solution? Another distro more suited to this application perhaps.

btw, Thanks, You Rock.

There might be, but anything you choose should be able to be adapted to your needs. Something like Damn Small Linux (DSL) has been designed to run from a "thumb drive"; in fact you can buy one from their site preinstalled, pretty sweet really. The problem is that DSL isn't for everyone, and DSL is (from what I have seen) designed more for mobile use (as in a thumb drive or small CD that travels with you) than for a diskless install. For me and my MythTV appliances, there were a lot of options for a diskless install and yet I still chose to do it myself using Gentoo; I didn't want to have to 'bend' to someone else's idea of how a diskless distro should be designed. RHEL on a 16GB CF card should be relatively seamless once you figure out the bootloader; which is that link above.

-Chad