Burning a RedHat CD HOWTO
 Morten Kjeldgaard, [email protected] and Peter von der Ah�,
 [email protected]
 $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 <[email protected]>)

 Joshua Sarro <[email protected]> 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 <[email protected]> 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 <[email protected]> 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 <[email protected]> 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
 <[email protected]> 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 <[email protected]>

 �  Thomas Duffy <[email protected]>

 �  Dawn Endico <[email protected]>

 �  Seva <[email protected]>

 �  Michael Thomas Cope <[email protected]>

 �  Charles J. Fisher <[email protected]>

 �  Eric Thomas <[email protected]>

 �  Gordon Yuen <[email protected]>


 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.

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