RHEL5 - copy files from DVD during %post

[John Summerfield]

John Oliver wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 11:47:34AM -0500, Kyle Powell wrote:
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>> John Oliver wrote:
>>> Someone has offered to send me a patched image, but... this has been
>>> known about for 18 months now.  In Bugzilla, a fix is promised in 5.2, but
>>> that never happened, and nobody at Red Hat has updated since.
>>>
>>> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=239002
>>>
>>> Very frustrating.
>>>
>> Hi John,
>>
>> Yes, it did happen. Here's the link to the relevant RHEL 5.2 errata:
>> http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2008-0397.html
>> "* do not eject the CD before the %post scripts are run."
> 
> That's great, but... what good does an RPM do me when this fix needs to
> be applied to the DVD?  I can't install an RPM to a directory structure.
> 
> I suppose I can try to crack an RPM open on a running machine and copy
> the resulting files around, but... this is a pretty silly way to
> distribute this fix.
> 
>> Can we back up a step? I'd like to help you get fixed up, but your original post
>> doesn't describe the problem you're having. What happens when you try to install
>> RHEL 5.2?
> 
> I need to mount the DVD in %post to copy files off, and I cannot do that
> when the DVD is ejected before the kickstart gets to %post.
> 

The fixed package has to come first. Hopefully, any and all future DVDs 
will incorporate the fix.

_I_ would be looking at the changes in the rpm and exploring whether I 
could apply the updates at boot time by
1. Creating an updates image for floppy (if I had one) or USB (if that 
works)
2. Remastering the DVD, incorporating this any any other needed fixes.

3. Hacking on the DVD image itself. This might be something I could do 
to the image, it might be something I could do in a %pre script.

As an alternative to all that, I'd look at alternative means such as:
1. Install off USB.
2. Copy preconfigured image off USB. Takes me five minutes to install 
Windows XP this way, booting systemimager off a USB flash drive, and 
(since the flash drive is tiny), I copied the image off a lappy disk in 
a USB enclosure. The image is a little over 6 Gbytes.
3. Copy preconfigured image off the LAN. This takes me about nine 
minutes doing one install booting the same USB disk. It has the 
advantage I don't have to wait to remove the USB drives, the 
systemimager disk is ready as soon as it's taking my orders.

Note, the systemimager USB boot disk is created from the CD image. One 
can add any commands one wishes to autorun[0-9] files in the USB disk's 
root directory. Since it's rw (as compared with CD), one can configure 
it from itself.

Note, the systemimager image can function as an NFS server, so having 
set one system up it can be cloned to any others with any kind of network.





-- 

Cheers
John

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