Out-of-band OS installation

[Gerald Combs]

Dustin Decker wrote:

> I think this would be a good opportunity to examine User Mode Linux... you
> can assign a file system to a new OS install, which in the same fashion as
> programs such as VMWare keep that whole file system in a directory, etc.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'd rather avoid having to manage a pile
of filesystems -- I want a huge hokin' shared "dist" directory
containing the "root" directory for each distribution.  I'd also like to
avoid the overhead of several UML kernels running at the same time when
I'm trying to compile packages.

I just found the page of someone who's already doing this:
http://www.hyperborea.org/software/dillo/system.html .  He's apparently
looking at a package called "mach" to create each build root:
http://thomas.apestaart.org/projects/mach/ .