Bah! It seems like I'm in need of many things these days. I've been hunting for this particular item for a while, though.
Basically, what I need is a CD that I can insert into a system, boot from it, and produce a LAMP server (with FTP) that pulls its content and config from a partition allocated on the server. That's all. No Open Office. No hacking tools. No compiler. No GUI. Just boot, configure once on the command line, and serve.
I've looked toward Knoppix, but there doesn't seem to be an easy way to have it boot the way I want: Set it up and forget about it.
Adios looks like it might do what I want, but it would be nice if there was just one CD that was designed for this purpose. With all the live linux distribution CDs out there, you'd think there would be one that's server-only.
This list of live CDs looks pretty informative.
Taking something like DamnSmallLinux and remastering it to remove X and add LAMP would be a fairly easy task if you have an hour or two on your hands.
It looks like Devil-Linux might do what I want. I'll give that a shot, and see what happens.
Devil-Linux (www.devil-linux.org) looks like it will do everything you need. I played with it a few months back for an hour or so. Seemed to work ok.
I was gonna ask if I was being dense... Wouldn't Lamppix (listed in your resource list)do the trick? I've been toying with using the lite version to run demos of my (web)work from CD for distribution (read:interviewing). The descriptions seem pretty close to what you need, but I haven't played with it enough to get the real drawbacks...
I keep looking at Lamppix, but from how they've described it, it's not going to let be keep the malleable content on the harddrive. It would be great if I was setting up a kiosk, or wanted to demo some of my work (like for interviewing), but I don't know if it will do an "install" like I want.
By the way, my playing for Devil-Linux, although not complete, isn't bearing fruit. This could possibly be due to VMWare's USB support and the lack of floppy disks in my house to store config info on, though. Hmm.