[Leaplist] small text-only live cd?

[jms1 at jms1.net]

howdy-

i have a client with a bunch of bleeding-edge machines, which were shipped
to him with "vista" pre-loaded. obviously step one was to wipe the hard
drives, but the only linux distro we can get to install on the thing is
mandriva.

now i'm looking for a way to automate the process of installing the OS and
pre-configuring a bunch of packages, not all of which are part of mandriva
itself. this includes a custom kernel (which i've already built and
tested.)

the idea in my mind is a CD or USB stick which boots into some kind of
"live cd" environment, where i can put my own scripts on the machine and
just tell the people who will be installing these units to "boot the CD
and type this command", and it does the rest (starting with partitioning
the drives and so forth.)

i spent most of yesterday with google, looking at several "live CD"
distros, a few of which i really like (i.e. the newest DSL kicks arse.)
however, because the hardware involved is so new, the only one which
actually boots on these machines is "mcnlive", where somebody converted
mandriva 2007 free into a live cd image. problem is, it's almost 400MB.

what i'm really looking for is a "live cd" without any kind of graphical
desktop, with a fairly simple way to re-master it with my own scripts, AND
with the ability to use my own custom kernel (because of the hardware.)

is there a web page out there which explains how to build a very minimal
"live" environment like this?

of course, if it ends up being "not entirely trivial", i'll write a web
page about it, which will explain it easily enough for others to follow in
my footsteps...