febootstrap allows you to
install centos/fedora really easily just like deboostrap.
Example to install centos in directory c5:
# febootstrap centos-5 c5 http://mirror.eunet.at/5.3/os/i386/ # ..... # chroot c5 cat /etc/redhat-release # CentOS release 5.3 (Final)
mach is another more generic way to bootstrap rpm based distributions to a directory. For an overview of the features just have a look at the README Example to install centos:
$ mach -r centos-5-i386-os setup base
If you just want to install Fedora/Centos into some directory use febootstrap as it is
quite simple and does the job.
But if you want to rebuild rpms or bootstrap
any other rpm based distribution like SuSE, Yellowdog use mach