i'm getting increasingly frustrated with the weirdness i'm having to deal with just trying to create a bootable USB drive containing centos 6.5, so if anyone out there understands this stuff and has a couple free hours this weekend, i would be delighted to pay for your time to come by and debug this, as i have just too much other stuff to do before monday morning. i'm working at the code factory on gloucester downtown, so if you're interested, and want to do this either this afternoon or sometime tomorrow, that would be great. i'm sure there's something simple i'm missing, but i can't spend any more time on it. if you want to call, it's 613-266-2902. rday -- ======================================================================== Robert P. J. Day Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA http://crashcourse.ca Twitter: http://twitter.com/rpjday LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday ========================================================================