Re: Making Linux Redhat CD's

[Tony Nugent <Tony Nugent usq edu au>]

On Wed Sep 30 1998 00:00, Paul Greene wrote:

> I recently got a CD-Writer in the office and attempted to make a RedHat 5.1
> CD with a RedHat directory tree downloaded from Sunsite.

I have some experience doing this.  I must have burned several so far this
year, and my more recent attempts are ElTorita bootable, and autoboot from
dos is working too.  The CDROM itself also contains all the updated rpms
current at the time of burning.  Very pleasing (I've been using these for
installing linux on computers here, but also a full "production" version
for students.  See http://www.sci.usq.edu.au/cdrom/).

> The CD-Writer is connected to a Win NT machine; and is a Hewlett Packard
> 7200. I bought Easy CD Creator software from Adaptec.

Baah!  Get linux onto this box!  :-)

[Our cdrom writer is duel-boot, and ECDC is on the win partition.  But I've
never bothered to tinker with it.  Seems as if I saved myself from wasting
time with it :-]

I've been using mkisofs, cdrecord, and (occasionally but not always)
xcdroast with linux.  Works great.

> I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that Redhat makes their CD with
> "Rockridge extensions", but Easy CD Creator doesn't have that option. The
> options are ISO 9660 Levels 1 and 3, and then Joliet.

When using mkisofs, Rockridge (without the TRANS.TBL files) is the way to
go, and Joliet too (which can do 64-char filenames, compared to mkisofs's
32-char "long filenames" option).

> I made the CD with Joliet format to keep the long filenames, but the boot
> disk didn't recognize the CD-ROM. (I'd read that Linux doesn't support
> Joliet format yet so I knew I was taking a chance.)

You need to have a specific structure to the actual filesystem on the
cdrom.  The boot disk looks for a "live" filesystem on it, and if it isn't
there then it will fail.

You probably made a mistake basing your cdrom on a download from sunsite
(rather than ftp.redhat.com).

> So I then tried just to copy the Redhat directory to a Win 95 partition on
> my hard drive and run a hard drive install, but got an error message along
> the lines of "Doesn't appear to be a valid Redhat directory tree".

No, of course not.  What you probably should have done is create the actual
image on a linux box, then drop the image onto your win95 parition and tell
the windong software to use that as the image to burn.

But cdrecord does a great job of burning the cdroms, so why not do
everything with linux?

> So two questions then;
> 
> 1. Can you make a good Linux CD in either of the above 3 formats (ISO Level
> 1 or 3, or Joliet)?

The image needs to be seen by linux as a valid filesystem, so that things
like symbolic links, file permissions (eg, executable files) and so on are
recognised.  I'm fairly certain that you'll need RockRidge extensions for
this.

Your windoze software doesn't seem to be able to do the job.  Use linux to
at least create the iso9660 image.

There are a couple of cdrom-writing howtos about the place.  Read them...
linux does a good job of this.

> 2. Why didn't the hard drive install work? I used the same directory
> structure as the Redhat directories on Sunsite.

See above.  (Things need to be in the right places on the CDROM).

> I ended up just installing a Slackware download from Sunsite, but I'd
> prefer to use Redhat 5.1 if possible.

Slackware is different, and installing it doesn't require much in the way
of requiring where things are on the cdrom.  But RedHat install cdroms are
different - things do need to be in certain places as the install program
expects this.

> (I suppose I should just pop the $50 for a Redhat CD, but I'm overseas and
> it's a bit of a hassle getting stuff shipped down here. Besides I'd rather
> solve the problem like a good little tinkerer anyway.)

Do that.  Study carefully what's on it, and how it is laid out.  Look at
how things are structured at ftp.redhat.com.  Try to figure out what the
"vital" files are, where they are, and why they are there.

If there are archives of this list, I wrote a sort of "mini howto" for
creating RedHat CDROM images a while ago.  There are some neat things that
you can do to totally customise the installation.

If you ask *really* nicely, I'll try to dig this up for you.  (I should
really put it up on the web).

Good luck.

Cheers
Tony
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  Tony Nugent <Tony Nugent usq edu au>           <linux usq edu au>
  Computer Support Officer                       Faculty of Science
  University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba Oueensland Australia
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