Burning a RedHat CD HOWTO
Morten Kjeldgaard, mok@imsb.au.dk and Peter von der Ah�,
pahe+rhcd@daimi.au.dk
$Date: 2000/03/02 16:28:37 $ $Revision: 1.34 $
This document describes how to make your own CDs from the Red Hat
Linux distribution equivalent to the ones commercially available from
Red Hat. The structure of the distribution is described, as well as
the procedure needed to include updated RPMS into the distribution.
Prerequisites are a good network connection, and a CD-writer.
______________________________________________________________________
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Anatomy of the Red Hat FTP site
2.1 The top level directory
2.2 The "RedHat" directory -- the core of the distribution
2.3 The "updates" directory
3. RPM packages
4. Obtaining your local copy of the distribution
5. Incorporating the updates
5.1 Correcting the file protection modes
5.2 Replacing the updated RPMS
5.2.1 Important note for RedHat 6.0, 6.1
5.3 Generating a new hdlist file
5.3.1 Important note for RedHat 6.1
5.3.2 Important note for RedHat 5.2
5.4 The
5.4.1 Format of comps file in RedHat versions < 6.1
5.4.2 Format of comps file in RedHat version 6.1
6. At last: burning the CD
6.1 Creating a bootable CD
6.1.1 Create iso9660 disk image
6.1.2 Test the image
6.1.3 Burn the disk
7. Installing from the CD
7.1 Booting from a bootable CD
8. Other Linux distributions
9. This document...
9.1 Related documentation
9.2 Acknowledgements
10. DISCLAIMER
______________________________________________________________________
1. Introduction
There may be several reasons for making your own CD. Perhaps you're a
cheapskate and want to save the $50 cost of the Red Hat distribution
<http://www.redhat.com/>. Or, perhaps you want a distribution CD
containing the latest distribution with all current updates. This is
highly relevant, because after each major release of the Red Hat
distribution, there have been loads of updates, several of which are
security related. Just take a look at the errata page
<http://www.redhat.com/corp/support/errata>.
2. Anatomy of the Red Hat FTP site
In the spirit of the Linux community, Red Hat Software has made
available their Linux distributions for several platforms on their FTP
site. These are all available from the top distribution directory.
2.1. The top level directory
The toplevel directory for RedHat Linux release 6.1
(pub/redhat/redhat-6.1 <ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/redhat-6.1/>)
contains distributions for the different platforms, and a directory
containing updates and corrections to program packages that have been
published since the release.
SRPMS/ alpha/ i386/ sparc/ iso/
In this document, we use the i386 distribution as an example. The
procedure given in this document is likely to work on all platforms
supported by Red Hat (Alpha, SPARC, ppc, etc.), but we have only
tested it on the i386 platform (the authors would be most interested
in additional information). The root of the i386 directory looks like
this:
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 18391 Mar 19 1999 COPYING
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3409 Sep 26 01:12 README
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1908 Sep 25 18:20 RPM-GPG-KEY
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Oct 26 09:01 RedHat/
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 538 Sep 26 04:16 autorun
-rwxr--r-- 1 root root 2048 Sep 30 20:00 boot.cat
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Oct 26 09:01 doc/
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Oct 26 09:01 dosutils/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 26 09:01 images/
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 391123 Jan 5 09:05 ls-lR
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 51786 Jan 5 09:05 ls-lR.gz
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Oct 26 09:01 misc/
The doc directory contains an abundance of information. Most
importantly, the RedHat installation manual can be found in HTML
format in the directory doc/rhmanual/manual/
<http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-6.1-Manual/install-guide/>.
Next, there is a number of FAQs, and finally, the entire collection of
HOWTOs and mini-HOWTOs.
The images directory contains boot floppy images that must be copied
to a diskette. In the most recent distribution (6.1), there are two
disk images available. The boot image is called boot.img, which is
required when installation is performed directly from a CD-ROM. If
installation from a local hard disk, NFS mounted disk or FTP is
required, the supplementary disk image supp.img might be needed. See
section ``Installing from the CD'' and references therein for details.
The misc directory contains source and executables of a number of
programs needed for the installation. Finally, the iso directory
contains iso9660 images just like the one you we about to make.
2.2. The "RedHat" directory -- the core of the distribution
The most important part of the directory tree is rooted in the RedHat
directory:
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 28672 Oct 26 09:01 RPMS
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 26 09:01 base
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jan 19 1999 i386
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Oct 26 09:01 instimage
The RPMS directory contains the major part of the Red Hat distribution
consisting of a set of RPM (Redhat Package Manager) files. An RPM
package typically contains binary executables, along with relevant
configuration files and documentation. See the section ``RPM
packages'' for more information.
The base directory holds different book-keeping files needed during
the installation process, e.g. the comps file, which defines the
components (groups of packages) used during the "Choose packages to
install" phase. See section ``The comps file'' for more information
on this file, and how to use it. Another important file in the base
directory is the hdlist file containing most of the header fields from
all the RPMs in the RPMS directory.
This means that all the interdependencies among RPM packages can be
determined just by reading hdlist without having to read all the RPM
packages which is quite convenient especially during FTP installs.
Another use of hdlist is mapping package names to file name, eg. perl
to perl-5.004-6.i386.rpm. This means that if you want to incorporate
updates from RedHat (see section ``Incorporating the updates'') or add
your own packages to the RPMS directory, you need to update hdlist.
This is descriped later in ``Generating a new hdlist file''.
The instimage directory contains a bare-bones live file system with a
number of programs and shared libraries needed during the installation
procedure.
2.3. The "updates" directory
The /pub/redhat/updates directory has updates for all releases of
RedHat's distribution since version 3.0.3. This is the place to find
software packages that have been uppdated for some reason or other.
You should especially be aware of security updates. These are
publicised on RedHat's errata page whenever a fix is available. The
most important files found in the updates directory are:
drwxrwxr-x 8 ftpuser ftpusers 8192 Aug 18 08:05 5.1/
drwxrwxr-x 9 ftpuser ftpusers 8192 Sep 18 08:07 5.2/
drwxrwxr-x 9 ftpuser ftpusers 8192 Jan 7 23:09 6.0/
drwxrwxr-x 9 ftpuser ftpusers 8192 Jan 7 23:09 6.1/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 ftpuser ftpusers 3 Aug 25 13:14 current -> 6.1/
The structure of each of these directories is similar to that
described in section ``The top level directory''
3. RPM packages
The major part of the Red Hat distribution consists of a set of RPM
(Redhat Package Manager) files. An RPM package typically contains
binary executables, along with relevant configuration files and
documentation. The rpm <http://www.rpm.org> program is a powerful
package manager, which can be used to install, query, verify, update,
erase and build software packages in the RPM format. Rpm convieniently
maintains a database of all the software packages it has installed, so
information on the installed software is available at any time.
The binary RPM files in the distribution have been built on a system
running the distribution itself. This is important, because most of
the programs in the packages rely on shared libraries. From RedHat
version 5.0, the new version 2 of the GNU standard C library (which is
64-bit clean) has been used. This version of the library is commonly
referred to as glibc or in Linux: libc 6. All executables in the
distribution have been linked against this library. If you attempt to
install binary files from a different distribution, chances are that
they will not work, unless you install the libc5 package for backwards
compability.
The names of the RPM packages contain the suffix .arch.rpm, where arch
is the architechture, having the value i386 for Intel platform
binaries. The packages you install must match the versions of the
shared libraries available on the machine. The rpm
<http://www.rpm.org> program is usually quite good at ensuring that
this is indeed the case, however, there are ways around this check,
and you should be sure that you know what you are doing if you force
installation of packages this way. However, using the RedHat
installation boot disk, it is ensured that the correct set of RPM
packages are installed on the machine.
If you discover an RPM package that was not installed on your system
during the installation process, don't despair. At any time, you may
(as root) install RPM packages, for example:
rpm --install WindowMaker-0.18-1b.i386.rpm
You can even install directly from the Internet, if you know the URL
of an RPM package:
rpm --install ftp://rufus.w3.org/redhat-contrib/noarch/mirror-2.9-2.noarch.rpm
Another version of the RPM packages contain the original sources used
to build the binaries. These packages have the suffix .src.rpm and are
situated in the SRPMS directory. These packages are not needed on the
installation CD, and in fact, there is not even enough disk space on
an 74 minute burnable CD to accomodate them. Of course, you can make a
separate CD with the SRPMS.
4. Obtaining your local copy of the distribution
You need a copy of the distribution on a writable disk which is
accessible from the computer having the CD writer (duh!). If you want
to incorporate the latest updates, this directory should (also) be
accessible from from a Linux machine, either from a local disk, an NFS
mounted disk on a different computer, or a JAZ disk.
You could copy the distribution from a RedHat CD, or you could get it
via FTP. If you choose to use FTP, the best way to get a correct copy
of the distribution is to use the mirror package.
Mirror is a sophisticated perl script that compares the content of a
directory on a remote site with a local directory. It will use FTP to
fetch the files that are on the remote site but not the local site,
and delete files on the local site that are not on the remote site.
The mirror program is configured with a configuration file. The
mirror package is available as an RPM from rufus.w3.org
<http://rufus.w3.org/linux/RPM/mirror.html>.
Make your local copy mirror.redhat of the mirror configuration file,
and edit the relevant fields at the top of the file. After the default
section, define these packages:
package=updates
site=ftp.sunsite.auc.dk
exclude_patt=(alpha/|sparc/|SRPMS/)
remote_dir=/disk1/ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/updates/6.1
local_dir=/jaz/updates/6.1
package=dist
site=ftp.sunsite.auc.dk
exclude_patt=(alpha/|sparc/|SRPMS/|iso/)
remote_dir=/disk1/ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/redhat-6.1
local_dir=/jaz/redhat-6.1
The following command will download a copy of the entire RedHat tree
on your local disk. *Think* before you do this, you are about to
transfer approximately 500Mb of data!
mirror -pdist mirror.redhat
This will mirror the Red Hat FTP site on your local disk. The content
of a Red Hat distribution does not change between releases, so you
only need to download this package ONCE. All changes to the
distribution are in the updates directory. Thus, if you want to keep
an up-to-date mirror of the Red Hat distribution, you only need to
keep the updates directory current. This is done using the command
mirror -pupdates mirror.redhat
You can run this regularly, say, once a week, through a cron script.
The RedHat distribution is available on a great number of FTP servers
around the world, which are updated daily from the master site at
<ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub>. You should choose an FTP site close to
you, see the RedHat list of mirror sites
<http://www.redhat.com/download/mirror.html>.
5. Incorporating the updates
To incorporate the updates, you need write access to the distribution
directory from a Linux machine, with a working version of rpm
<http://www.rpm.org> installed. There are three steps involved:
1. Correct the file protection modes.
2. Replace updated RPMs.
3. Generate the hdlist file
If you maintain a mirror of the updates directory, you can at any time
produce a CD including the current updates by repeating these steps.
5.1. Correcting the file protection modes
During the installation process, some programs are run directly off
the CD. Unfortunately, the FTP program does not always preserve the
protection modes of the files and directories that are copied.
Therefore, it is necessary to make sure that execute permission is
given to programs, shell scripts and shared libraries, before the
directory is burned on the CD. This is done by running the updatePerm
script on your local copy of the distribution:
______________________________________________________________________
#!/bin/bash
RHVERSION=6.1
LIST=/tmp/er3hd3w25
RHROOT=/jaz/redhat-${RHVERSION}
# Find all directories, and make sure they have +x permission
find $RHROOT -type d -exec chmod -c 755 {} \;
# Find all files that are executables, shell, python or perl scripts
find $RHROOT -type f | file -f - | grep -v RPM \
| egrep -i 'executable|perl|bourne|shell|python' | cut -f1 -d: > $LIST
# ====> NEEDED FOR RedHat 6.1 ^^^^^^^
# Find shared libraries
find $RHROOT -name \*.so >> $LIST
# Make them executable
while read file
do
if [ ! -x $file ] ; then
chmod -c 755 $file
fi
done < $LIST
/bin/rm $LIST
exit 0
______________________________________________________________________
5.2. Replacing the updated RPMS
The following script called updateCD copies all files from the update
directory to the RPMS directory. The script uses some nifty rpm tricks
to determine what packages in the updates directory are more recent.
Older packages are moved to the ${OLD} directory.
______________________________________________________________________
#! /bin/bash
# This script updates rpms in a RedHat distribution found in $RPMDIR.
# The old rpms will be placed in $OLDDIR.
# The new rpms should be located in $UPDDIR.
# The new images are in $IMGDIR
# The images to be updated are in $OMGDIR
# The architechture is $ARCH.
RHVERSION=6.1
ARCH=i386
RHROOT=/jaz/redhat-${RHVERSION}
RPMDIR=${RHROOT}/${ARCH}/RedHat/RPMS
UPDDIR=${RHROOT}/updates/${ARCH}
IMGDIR=${RHROOT}/updates/images/${ARCH}
OMGDIR=${RHROOT}/${ARCH}/images
OLDDIR=${RHROOT}/old
if [ ! -d $OLDDIR ] ; then
echo making directory $OLDDIR
mkdir $OLDDIR
fi
allow_null_glob_expansion=1
for rpm in ${UPDDIR}/*.rpm ; do
NAME=`rpm --queryformat "%{NAME}" -qp $rpm`
unset OLDNAME
for oldrpm in ${RPMDIR}/${NAME}*.rpm ; do
if [ `rpm --queryformat "%{NAME}" -qp $oldrpm` = "$NAME" ]; then
OLDNAME=$oldrpm;
break
fi
done
if [ -z "$OLDNAME" ]; then
echo $NAME is new
cp -pv $rpm $RPMDIR
else
if [ `basename $rpm` != `basename $OLDNAME` ]; then
mv $OLDNAME $OLDDIR
cp -pv $rpm $RPMDIR
fi
fi
done
# Copy new boot image files to the right place...
for newfile in ${IMGDIR}/* ; do
file=${OMGDIR}/$(basename ${newfile})
if [ $newfile -nt $file ] ; then
cp -pv $newfile $file
fi
done
exit 0
______________________________________________________________________
5.2.1. Important note for RedHat 6.0, 6.1
Certain RPMs, specifically the kernel and kernel-smp packages, include
the platform in the filename but not in the package name. For
example, the "kernel" package comes in several flavors:
kernel-2.2.5-22.i386.rpm
kernel-2.2.5-22.i586.rpm
kernel-2.2.5-22.i686.rpm
but for all three rpm -qp returns just "kernel" for the package name.
As you can see, this "outsmarts" the updateCD script. The result is
that only the last one gets properly copied. The first two get
copied, but are then moved to the $OLD directory! Preferably, RedHat
should name these differently. But for now, the easy solution is to
move the packages by hand, after running updateCD. (Thanks to Kyle B.
Ferrio <kyle@U.Arizona.EDU>)
Joshua Sarro <mthed@shore.net> has contributed a perl script called
updateMirror.pl which can deal with the situation. You can fetch it
here: <http://imsb.au.dk/~mok/linux/doc/updateMirror.pl>.
5.3. Generating a new hdlist file
When installing from the CD, the installation program on the CD relies
on the file RedHat/base/hdlist describing what RPM packages are
available on the CD. The hdlist file can be generated by the program
misc/src/install/genhdlist. This program must be run with the
absolute path to the root of the distribution as the only argument.
Here is the updateHdlist script which calls that program:
______________________________________________________________________
#!/bin/bash
RHVERSION=6.1
ARCH=i386
echo generating hdlist...
RHROOT=/jaz/redhat-${RHVERSION}
GENHDDIR=${RHROOT}/${ARCH}/misc/src/install
chmod u+x ${GENHDDIR}/genhdlist
chmod 644 ${RHROOT}/${ARCH}/RedHat/base/hdlist
${GENHDDIR}/genhdlist ${RHROOT}/${ARCH} || echo "*** GENHDLIST FAILED ***"
exit 0
______________________________________________________________________
NOTE: After having incorporated the updates in the main RedHat/RPMS
directory, your copy of the distribution is no longer a mirror of the
Red Hat distribution site. Actually, it is more up-to-date! Therefore,
if you attempt to mirror the distribution, older versions of the RPM's
that have been updated will be downloaded once more, and the updates
deleted.
5.3.1. Important note for RedHat 6.1
The installation in RedHat 6.1 is completely changed from earlier
versions, and RedHat have introduced a system called ``anaconda''. The
genhdlist program is now found in a different place, so in the script
above, use
______________________________________________________________________
GENHDDIR=${RHROOT}/${ARCH}/misc/src/anaconda/utils
______________________________________________________________________
The updatePerm script must be changed to include ``python'' in line
13. This has been done in the listing above, but if you've cut the
script from earlier versions of this document (before 1.30), you need
to make the change!
In some cases, genhdlist fails to run, because the executable is not
statically linked. In such a case, you can add a new line
${RHROOT}/${ARCH}/RedHat/instimage/usr/lib in /etc/ld.so.conf and run
ldconfig -v.
Another solution is to recompile genhdlist. The following modification
to the updateHdlist script worked under RedHat 5.2:
______________________________________________________________________
#!/bin/bash
RHVERSION=6.1
ARCH=i386
RHROOT=/misc/redhat/redhat-${RHVERSION}
GENHDDIR=${RHROOT}/${ARCH}/misc/src/anaconda/utils
echo Compiling genhdlist...
sed -e 's/FD_t/int/' \
-e 's/fdOpen/open/' \
-e 's/fdClose/close/' \
-e 's/fdFileno//' < ${GENHDDIR}/genhdlist.c > /tmp/genhdlist.c
cc -o /tmp/genhdlist -I/usr/include/rpm /tmp/genhdlist.c -lrpm -lz
echo generating hdlist...
chmod 644 ${RHROOT}/${ARCH}/RedHat/base/hdlist
/tmp/genhdlist ${RHROOT}/${ARCH} || echo "*** GENHDLIST FAILED ***"
exit 0
______________________________________________________________________
In this version of the script, a copy of the C source of genhdlist.c
is piped through sed to create a copy in /tmp that will compile under
RedHat 5.2. This version of genhdlist is then used to create the
hdlist file
5.3.2. Important note for RedHat 5.2
As distributed with RedHat version 5.2 and earlier, genhdlist CRASHES
if there are files in the RedHat/RPMS directory which are not RPM
files! This causes problems, because in the 5.2 distribution, there
are a couple of non-RPM files named ls-lR and ls-lR.gz in RedHat/RPMS.
Therefore, you must remove all non-RPM files from the directory.
Alternatively, you can apply the following patch to
misc/src/install/genhdlist.c and do a make. The patch will cause
genhdlist to ignore any non-RPM files.
______________________________________________________________________
*** genhdlist.c.orig Fri Nov 27 12:08:13 1998
--- genhdlist.c Fri Nov 27 12:08:20 1998
***************
*** 12,23 ****
--- 12,26 ----
#define FILENAME_TAG 1000000
+ /* Not used apparently...
+
int tags[] = { RPMTAG_NAME, RPMTAG_VERSION, RPMTAG_RELEASE, RPMTAG_SERIAL,
RPMTAG_FILENAMES, RPMTAG_FILESIZES, RPMTAG_GROUP,
RPMTAG_REQUIREFLAGS, RPMTAG_REQUIRENAME, RPMTAG_REQUIREVERSION,
RPMTAG_DESCRIPTION, RPMTAG_SUMMARY, RPMTAG_PROVIDES,
RPMTAG_SIZE, RPMTAG_OBSOLETES };
int numTags = sizeof(tags) / sizeof(int);
+ */
int main(int argc, char ** argv) {
char buf[300];
***************
*** 26,34 ****
--- 29,39 ----
struct dirent * ent;
int fd, rc, isSource;
Header h;
+ /* not used
int count, type;
int i;
void * ptr;
+ */
if (argc != 2) {
fprintf(stderr, "usage: genhdlist <dir>\n");
***************
*** 74,79 ****
--- 79,85 ----
rc = rpmReadPackageHeader(fd, &h, &isSource, NULL, NULL);
+ if (!rc) {
headerRemoveEntry(h, RPMTAG_POSTIN);
headerRemoveEntry(h, RPMTAG_POSTUN);
headerRemoveEntry(h, RPMTAG_PREIN);
***************
*** 110,115 ****
--- 116,122 ----
headerWrite(outfd, h, HEADER_MAGIC_YES);
headerFree(h);
close(fd);
+ }
}
errno = 0;
______________________________________________________________________
5.4. Thecomps file
The comps file defines how the packages are bundled during the
installation. In the Red Hat distribution, this is done according to
the functionality they provide, for example:
� Printer Support
� X Window System
� GNOME
� KDE
� Mail/WWW/News Tools
� ...
� Kernel Development
� Extra Documentation
Sometime during the installation process, the user is presented with a
dialog called "Components to install". Some of the components have
been preselected, and others not. The last item on the components list
is called "Everything". According to the Red Hat documentation,
selecting every package will require close to 1 Gb of free disk space.
On the dialog box, there also is an option that enables the user to
customize exactly what packages will be installed. Customizing the
installation by hand, or selecting "Everything" in the components list
is the only way to have your own packages installed unless you modify
the RedHat/base/comps file.
5.4.1. Format of comps file in RedHat versions < 6.1
The format of the comps file currently starts with a header describing
the version of the comps format, followed by an empty line.
0.1
<empty line>
After this, the components are listed, separated by empty lines:
<component 1>
<empty line>
<component 2>
<empty line>
.
.
<component n>
<empty line>
EOF
Each component has the following definition:
(0|1) (--hide)? <name>
<RPM 1>
<RPM 2>
...
<RPM n>
end
Before the name of each component, 0 or 1 is given. A value of 1 here
means that the component is chosen by default, and 0 means it's not.
The option "--hide" means that you will not see the entry, unless you
choose "expert" installation. The first component is called "Base",
and that is special, in the sense that it must be present and it does
not show up in the dialog (you can't deselect the base installation,
which makes sense...)
Next follows a list of rpm packages belonging to that component. Note
that this is the package name stored in the rpm file, and not any part
of the file name of the package (although it is often the same).
By adding your packages to the comps file, you can customize your own
distribution, and make sure that your packages will be installed by
default. One thing to be careful about is interdependence among your
packages, but here, you are on your own :-) A word of warning: be
careful not to add or remove extra whitespace in the file. Examine the
existing comps file (make a copy of the original) to see how it's done
(or check i386/misc/src/install/pkgs.c if you want to see how the file
is parsed).
5.4.2. Format of comps file in RedHat version 6.1
With RedHat version 6.1, the format of the comps file has changed. We
have not yet disected it to discover the file format. With the above
information, however, it should be easy enough to do it yourself. The
decoding takes place in ${RHROOT}/${ARCH}/misc/src/anaconda/comps.py.
6. At last: burning the CD
As we assume that you have a working CD-writer on your system, and you
know how to use it, we wont go into much detail about burning the CD.
If you are burning your CD on a Linux system, you can install the
excellent XCDroast <http://www.fh-muenchen.de/rz/xcdroast> package.
In XCDRoast, switch on the Rock Ridge extensions, and the creation of
a TRANS.TBL file.
Make sure the top directory of the CD contains at least the following
files and directories:
COPYING RPM-PGP-KEY README RedHat/
The following directories might come in handy:
doc/ gnome/ misc/ dosutils/ images/
6.1. Creating a bootable CD
Since XCDroast doesn't support creation of bootable disks you'll need
to use other tools, for example mkisofs
<ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages/mkisofs/> (RPMs
<http://rufus.w3.org/linux/RPM/mkisofs.html>). and cdrecord
<http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/glone/employees/joerg.schilling/private/cdrecord.html>.
(RPMs <http://rufus.w3.org/linux/RPM/cdrecord.html>). You'll need to
create an image file which will be written to the CD. This file will
be 500Mb or more so find a partition with enough free space and change
the path for redhat.img in the following commands if necessary. You
may need to be root to use mount and cdrecord.
6.1.1. Create iso9660 disk image
Change directory to the place in your mirror that will be the root
directory of the cd. For instance, redhat-6.1/i386.
mkisofs -v -r -T -J -V "Red Hat 6.1" -b images/boot.img -c boot.catalog -o /tmp/redhat.img .
The file ${RHROOT}/boot.catalog will be created by mkisofs.
Some versions of mkisofs do not have a -J option. It can be omitted
since the Joliet extensions it specifies are not used by the installer
although they make the CD more readable in Windows.
6.1.2. Test the image
If you're paranoid you can test your new disk image by mounting it. If
you forgot to fix the file permissions or set the rock ridge
extensions then the error will be obvious here since the file names
and directory structure will be wrong.
mount -t iso9660 -o ro,loop=/dev/loop0 /tmp/redhat.img /mnt/cdrom
When you're done, don't forget to unmount it.
umount /mnt/cdrom
6.1.3. Burn the disk
Be sure to set the correct speed for your device. This command is for
a 4X CDR. You may have a 1X or 2X drive.
cdrecord -v speed=4 dev=0,3 /tmp/redhat.img
In the above command, it is assumed that the CD writer is on SCSI bus
0, with ID number 3.
7. Installing from the CD
When installing from the new CD, you may first need to create a
bootable installation diskette. IMPORTANT: use a NEW, freshly MS-DOS
formatted diskette! Using an old, worn-out, faulty diskette can result
in strange problems during the installation!
On a Linux system, you can create the diskette using the dd command:
dd if=/mnt/cdrom/images/boot.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=1440k
On a system running DOS or Windows-9x, you need to use the RAWRITE.EXE
program, which is found on the CD in the dosutils directory.
Shut down the machine you want to install (or do a system upgrade) on,
insert the boot diskette and your freshly burned CD, and let the
machine boot from the diskette. For more information on the
installation process, se the documents and the Installation-HOWTO or
the Bootdisk-HOWTO which are on the CD in the doc/HOWTO directory.
7.1. Booting from a bootable CD
Most modern machines are able to boot directly from a CD, provided it
is made bootable with the procedure outlined in section ``Creating a
bootable CD''. Often, however, you need to change the setting of the
BIOS to make the CD drive bootable. See the documentation for your
mother board to see how it's done.
8. Other Linux distributions
The information in this document also applies to other Linux
distributions that are RedHat clones, such as Mandrake
<http://www.linux-mandrake.com>, although we have not actually tried
them ourself. The Mandrake distributions uses a simpler hdgenlist
program (it's a shell script), and other details may be different.
The LinuxPPC <http://www.linuxppc.org> distribution for Apple
PowerMacs and other PowerPPC machines is also somewhat similar to the
RedHat distribution. When making a distribution for the PowerMac
platform, you need to use mkhybrid
<http://rufus.w3.org/linux/RPM/mkhybrid.html>) instead of mkisofs. We
have not tried it, but we'd like to hear from people who have.
9. This document...
The SGML source of the most recent version of this document can be
retrieved from <http://imsb.au.dk/~mok/linux/doc/RedHat-CD.sgml>
(HTML version <http://imsb.au.dk/~mok/linux/doc/RedHat-CD.html>).
You can link to the RedHat-CD mini HOWTO by making the following
reference on your home page:
<a href="http://imsb.au.dk/~mok/linux/doc/RedHat-CD.html">
<img src="http://imsb.au.dk/~mok/logos/RedHat-CD.png" alt="RedHat CD mini-howto" height=30 nosave border=0>
</a>
9.1. Related documentation
Ed Schlunder <zilym@asu.edu> has written a utility called fix-rhcd to
let you check your Red Hat Linux distribution mirror for matching file
sizes, names, permissions, and symlinks against an "ls -lNR" listing
from the offical Red Hat ftp site. Any permissions that are wrong are
changed to match the ls listing. See the fix-rhcd homepage
<http://www.ajusd.org/~edward/fix-rhcd/>.
Rod Smith <smithrod@bellatlantic.net> has written a Do-It-Yourself Red
Hat Installation guide, which also includes information on creating
RedHat install CD's. Especially aimed at burning a CD from a non-UNIX
system. Find it at
<http://members.bellatlantic.net/~smithrod/rhjol.html>.
A document in french ``Comment graver un CD de la RedHat 5.x a partir
de fichiers telecharges sur Internet...'' by <skooter@hol.fr> is
available from <http://linuxfr.org/docs/article/gravure-CD-
RH51.html>.
With the sense of the good things in life Jussi Torhonen from Finland
<jussi.torhonen@tietosavo.fi> tells us Howto make a homebrew
<http://www.iwn.fi/~jt/cd/> bootable RedHat Linux 5.2 CD-ROM.
>From the LDP project, see the CD-writing HOWTO
<http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/CD-Writing-HOWTO.html>.
9.2. Acknowledgements
Apart from those mentioned above, thanks are given to the following
people for valuable input, feedback and discussions:
� Lars Christensen <larsch@cs.auc.dk>
� Thomas Duffy <tbd@cs.brown.edu>
� Dawn Endico <dawn@math.wayne.edu>
� Seva <seva@null.cc.uic.edu>
� Michael Thomas Cope <mcope@orion.ac.hmc.edu>
� Charles J. Fisher <charles_fisher@bigfoot.com>
� Eric Thomas <eric.thomas@ericsson.com>
� Gordon Yuen <gdccyuen@yahoo.com>
10. DISCLAIMER
While the given information in this document is believed to be
correct, the authors assume no responsibility whatsoever for any
damage to hardware and/or software, or any loss of data resulting from
the procedures outlined in this document.