Out-of-band OS installation

[Gerald Combs]

I would like to build software packages for a variety of Linux
distributions on the same computer.  One way to accomplish this might be
to have a directory hierarchy like the following:

    /dist
        /fecoracore1
        /fecoracore2
        /fecoracore3
        /redhat80
        /redhat90
        /suse90
        /suse91

where "redhat80" contained an entire Red Hat 8.0 distribution.  It would
then be a simple matter to chroot into one of the directories, update
SVN, and start building.

Assuming that I didn't want a separate partition for each distribution,
how would I go about installing them?


One way would be to install into a staging partition, then
tar/rsync/pax/cpio'ing it into the preferred "dist" directory.  I'd
rather not have to bring the system down each time I install a target
OS, however.

Is there a standard method for doing an install similar to Solaris'
"Live Update" for the different Linux distributions?  This would be
pretty straightforward under Gentoo, since its installer program is a
bash prompt.  Is such a thing possible with Red Hat, Fedora, or SuSE?