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<!DOCTYPE LINUXDOC SYSTEM>
<!-- $Id$ -->
<article>
<title>Burning a RedHat CD HOWTO
<author>
Morten Kjeldgaard, <tt/mok@imsb.au.dk/
and Peter von der Ah&eacute;, <tt/pahe+rhcd@daimi.au.dk/
</author>
<date>$Date$ $Revision$
<abstract>
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.
</abstract>
<toc>
<!-- -->
<sect>Introduction<p>
There may be several reasons for making your own CD. Perhaps you're a
cheapskate and want to save the $50 cost of the <url
url="http://www.redhat.com/" name="Red Hat distribution">. 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
<url url="http://www.redhat.com/corp/support/errata" name="errata page">.
<sect>Anatomy of the Red Hat FTP site<p>
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.
<sect1>The top level directory<label id=sec-top-level><p>
The toplevel directory for RedHat Linux release 6.1 (<url
url="ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/redhat-6.1/"
name="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.
<tscreen><verb>
SRPMS/ alpha/ i386/ sparc/ iso/
</verb></tscreen>
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:
<tscreen><verb>
-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/
</verb></tscreen>
The <tt/doc/ directory contains an abundance of information. Most
importantly, the RedHat installation manual can be found in HTML format in
the directory <url
url="http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-6.1-Manual/install-guide/"
name="doc/rhmanual/manual/">. Next, there is a number of FAQs, and finally,
the entire collection of HOWTOs and mini-HOWTOs.
The <tt /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 <tt/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 <tt/supp.img/ might be needed. See section <ref
id="sec-install" name="Installing from the CD"> and references therein for
details.
The <tt/misc/ directory contains source and executables of a number of
programs needed for the installation. Finally, the <tt/iso/ directory
contains iso9660 images just like the one you we about to make.
<sect1>The "RedHat" directory -- the core of the distribution<p>
The most important part of the directory tree is rooted in the <tt/RedHat/
directory:
<tscreen><verb>
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
</verb></tscreen>
The <tt/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 <ref id=sec-rpm name="RPM
packages"> for more information.
The <tt/base/ directory holds different book-keeping files needed during
the installation process, e.g. the <tt/comps/ file, which defines the
<em/components/ (groups of packages) used during the "Choose packages to
install" phase. See section <ref id="sec-comps" name="The comps file">
for more information on this file, and how to use it. Another important
file in the <tt/base/ directory is the <tt/hdlist/ file containing most of
the header fields from all the RPMs in the <tt/RPMS/ directory.
This means that all the interdependencies among RPM packages can be
determined just by reading <tt/hdlist/ without having to read all the
RPM packages which is quite convenient especially during FTP installs.
Another use of <tt/hdlist/ is mapping package names to file name,
eg. <tt/perl/ to <tt/perl-5.004-6.i386.rpm/. This means that if you
want to incorporate updates from RedHat (see section <ref
id="sec-updates" name="Incorporating the updates">) or add your own
packages to the <tt/RPMS/ directory, you need to update <tt/hdlist/.
This is descriped later in <ref id="sec-new-hdlist" name="Generating a
new hdlist file">.
The <tt/instimage/ directory contains a bare-bones live file system with a
number of programs and shared libraries needed during the installation
procedure.
<sect1>The "updates" directory<p>
The <tt><file>/pub/redhat/updates</file></tt> 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 <tt/updates/ directory are:
<tscreen><verb>
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/
</verb></tscreen>
The structure of each of these directories is similar to
that described in section <ref id="sec-top-level" name="The top level directory">
<sect>RPM packages<label id=sec-rpm><p>
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 <tt><url url="http://www.rpm.org" name=rpm></tt> program is a powerful
package manager, which can be used to install, query, verify, update, erase
and build software packages in the RPM format. <tt/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
<tt/glibc/ or in Linux: <tt/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 .<em>arch</em>.<tt/rpm/,
where <em/arch/ is the architechture, having the value <tt/i386/ for Intel
platform binaries. The packages you install must match the versions of the
shared libraries available on the machine. The <tt><url
url="http://www.rpm.org" name=rpm></tt> 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:
<tscreen><verb>
rpm --install WindowMaker-0.18-1b.i386.rpm
</verb></tscreen>
You can even install directly from the Internet, if you know the URL of an
RPM package:
<tscreen><verb>
rpm --install ftp://rufus.w3.org/redhat-contrib/noarch/mirror-2.9-2.noarch.rpm
</verb></tscreen>
Another version of the RPM packages contain the original sources used to
build the binaries. These packages have the suffix <tt><file>.src.rpm</file></tt> and
are situated in the <tt/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.
<sect>Obtaining your local copy of the distribution<p>
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 <tt /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 <url url="http://rufus.w3.org/linux/RPM/mirror.html"
name="rufus.w3.org">. <!-- or as a tarball from xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.-->
Make your local copy <tt/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:
<tscreen><verb>
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
</verb></tscreen>
The following command will download a copy of the entire RedHat tree on
your local disk. <em/*Think*/ before you do this, you are about to transfer
approximately 500Mb of data!
<tscreen><verb>
mirror -pdist mirror.redhat
</verb></tscreen>
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 <em/ONCE/. All changes to the distribution are in the <tt
/updates/ directory. Thus, if you want to keep an up-to-date mirror of the
Red Hat distribution, you only need to keep the <tt/updates/ directory
current. This is done using the command
<tscreen><verb>
mirror -pupdates mirror.redhat
</verb></tscreen>
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 <url
url="ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub">. You should choose an FTP site close to
you, see the <url name="RedHat list of mirror sites"
url="http://www.redhat.com/download/mirror.html">.
<sect>Incorporating the updates<label id=sec-updates><p>
To incorporate the updates, you need write access to the distribution
directory from a Linux machine, with a working version of <url
url="http://www.rpm.org" name=rpm> installed. There are three steps
involved:
<enum>
<item>Correct the file protection modes.
<item>Replace updated RPMs.
<item>Generate the hdlist file
</enum>
If you maintain a mirror of the <tt/updates/ directory, you can at any time
produce a CD including the current updates by repeating these steps.
<sect1>Correcting the file protection modes<p>
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 <tt/updatePerm/ script on your local copy of
the distribution:
<code>
#!/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 $LIST
exit 0
</code>
<sect1>Replacing the updated RPMS<p>
The following script called <tt/updateCD/ copies all files from the update
directory to the RPMS directory. The script uses some nifty rpm tricks to
determine what packages in the updates directory are more recent. Older
packages are moved to the <tt/${OLD}/ directory.
<code>
#! /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
</code>
<sect2>Important note for RedHat 6.0, 6.1<p>
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:
<tscreen><verb>
kernel-2.2.5-22.i386.rpm
kernel-2.2.5-22.i586.rpm
kernel-2.2.5-22.i686.rpm
</verb></tscreen>
but for all three rpm -qp returns just "kernel" for the package name.
As you can see, this "outsmarts" the <file>updateCD</file> script. The
result is that only the last one gets properly copied. The first two get
copied, but are then moved to the $OLD directory! Preferably, RedHat should
name these differently. But for now, the easy solution is to move the
packages by hand, after running <file>updateCD</file>. (Thanks to Kyle
B. Ferrio &lt;kyle@U.Arizona.EDU&gt;)
Joshua Sarro &lt;mthed@shore.net&gt; has contributed a perl script called
<file>updateMirror.pl</file> which can deal with the situation. You can
fetch it here: <url
url="http://imsb.au.dk/~mok/linux/doc/updateMirror.pl">.
<sect1>Generating a new hdlist file<label id=sec-new-hdlist><p>
When installing from the CD, the installation program on the CD relies on
the file <tt><file>RedHat/base/hdlist</file></tt> describing what RPM
packages are available on the CD. The <tt><file>hdlist</file></tt> file can
be generated by the program
<tt><file>misc/src/install/genhdlist</file></tt>. This program must be run
with the absolute path to the root of the distribution as the only
argument. Here is the <tt/updateHdlist/ script which calls that program:
<code>
#!/bin/bash
RHVERSION=6.1
ARCH=i386
echo generating hdlist...
RHROOT=/jaz/redhat-${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
</code>
NOTE: After having incorporated the updates in the main
<tt><file>RedHat/RPMS</file></tt> 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.
<sect2>Important note for RedHat 6.1<p>
The installation in RedHat 6.1 is completely changed from earlier versions,
and RedHat have introduced a system called ``anaconda''. The
<file>genhdlist</file> program is now found in a different place, so in the
script above, use
<code>
GENHDDIR=${RHROOT}/${ARCH}/misc/src/anaconda/utils
</code>
The updatePerm script must be changed to include ``python'' in line
13. This <em>has</em> 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, <tt><file>genhdlist</file></tt> fails to run, because the
executable is not statically linked. In such a case, you can add a new line
<tt><file>${RHROOT}/${ARCH}/RedHat/instimage/usr/lib</file></tt> in
<tt><file>/etc/ld.so.conf</file></tt> and run <tt><file>ldconfig
-v</file></tt>.
Another solution is to recompile <tt><file>genhdlist</file></tt>. The
following modification to the <tt/updateHdlist/ script worked under RedHat
5.2:
<code>
#!/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
</code>
In this version of the script, a copy of the C source of
<tt><file>genhdlist.c</file></tt> is piped through
<tt><file>sed</file></tt> to create a copy in <tt><file>/tmp</file></tt>
that will compile under RedHat 5.2. This version of
<tt><file>genhdlist</file></tt> is then used to create the
<tt><file>hdlist</file></tt> file
<sect2>Important note for RedHat 5.2<p>
As distributed with RedHat version 5.2 and earlier,
<tt><file>genhdlist</file></tt> CRASHES if there are files in the
<tt><file>RedHat/RPMS</file></tt> directory which are <em>not</em> RPM
files! This causes problems, because in the 5.2 distribution, there are a
couple of non-RPM files named <tt/ls-lR/ and <tt/ls-lR.gz/ in
<tt><file>RedHat/RPMS</file></tt>. Therefore, you must remove all non-RPM
files from the directory. Alternatively, you can apply the following patch
to <tt><file>misc/src/install/genhdlist.c</file></tt> and do a make. The
patch will cause <tt/genhdlist/ to ignore any non-RPM files.
<code>
*** 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, &amp;h, &amp;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;
</code>
<sect1>The <file>comps</file> file<label id=sec-comps><p>
The <file>comps</file> 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:
<itemize>
<item>Printer Support
<item>X Window System
<item>GNOME
<item>KDE
<item>Mail/WWW/News Tools
<item>...
<item>Kernel Development
<item>Extra Documentation
</itemize>
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
<tt><file>RedHat/base/comps</file></tt> file.
<sect2>Format of comps file in RedHat versions &lt; 6.1<p>
The format of the <tt><file>comps</file></tt> file currently starts with a
header describing the version of the comps format, followed by an empty
line.
<tscreen><verb>
0.1
<empty line>
</verb></tscreen>
After this, the components are listed, separated by empty lines:
<tscreen><verb>
<component 1>
<empty line>
<component 2>
<empty line>
.
.
<component n>
<empty line>
EOF
</verb></tscreen>
Each component has the following definition:
<tscreen><verb>
(0|1) (--hide)? <name>
<RPM 1>
<RPM 2>
...
<RPM n>
end
</verb></tscreen>
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 <em>must</em> 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 <em>in the rpm file</em>, and <em>not</em>
any part of the file name of the package (although it is often the same).
By adding your packages to the <tt><file>comps</file></tt> 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 <tt><file>comps</file></tt> file (make a copy of the original) to
see how it's done (or check
<tt><file>i386/misc/src/install/pkgs.c</file></tt> if you want to see how
the file is parsed).
<sect2>Format of comps file in RedHat version 6.1<p>
With RedHat version 6.1, the format of the <tt><file>comps</file></tt> 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
<tt><file>${RHROOT}/${ARCH}/misc/src/anaconda/comps.py</file></tt>.
<sect>At last: burning the CD<p>
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
<url url="http://www.fh-muenchen.de/rz/xcdroast" name="XCDroast">
package. In XCDRoast, switch on the Rock Ridge extensions, and
the creation of a TRANS.TBL file.
Make sure the <em>top</em> directory of the CD contains at least the
following files and directories:
<tscreen><verb>
COPYING RPM-PGP-KEY README RedHat/
</verb></tscreen>
The following directories might come in handy:
<tscreen><verb>
doc/ gnome/ misc/ dosutils/ images/
</verb></tscreen>
<sect1>Creating a bootable CD <label id="sec-bootable"><p>
Since XCDroast doesn't support creation of bootable disks you'll need to
use other tools, for example <tt><url
url="ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages/mkisofs/" name="mkisofs"></tt>
(<url url="http://rufus.w3.org/linux/RPM/mkisofs.html" name="RPMs">). and
<tt><url
url="http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/glone/employees/joerg.schilling/private/cdrecord.html"
name="cdrecord"></tt>. (<url
url="http://rufus.w3.org/linux/RPM/cdrecord.html" name="RPMs">).
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 <tt/redhat.img/ in the following commands if
necessary. You may need to be root to use <tt/mount/ and <tt/cdrecord/.
<sect2>Create iso9660 disk image<p>
Change directory to the place in your mirror that will be the root
directory of the cd. For instance, redhat-6.1/i386.
<tscreen><verb>
mkisofs -v -r -T -J -V "Red Hat 6.1" -b images/boot.img -c boot.catalog -o /tmp/redhat.img .
</verb></tscreen>
<!-- Joerg Schilling: mkisofs -R (capital) and *not* -r is needed for Linux install disks (??) -->
The file <tt><file>${RHROOT}/boot.catalog</file></tt> will be created by
<tt><file>mkisofs</file></tt>.
Some versions of <tt/mkisofs/ do not have a <tt/-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.
<sect2>Test the image<p>
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.
<tscreen><verb>
mount -t iso9660 -o ro,loop=/dev/loop0 /tmp/redhat.img /mnt/cdrom
</verb></tscreen>
When you're done, don't forget to unmount it.
<tscreen><verb>
umount /mnt/cdrom
</verb></tscreen>
<sect2>Burn the disk<p>
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.
<tscreen><verb>
cdrecord -v speed=4 dev=0,3 /tmp/redhat.img
</verb></tscreen>
In the above command, it is assumed that the CD writer is on SCSI bus 0,
with ID number 3.
<sect>Installing from the CD<label id="sec-install"><p>
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 <tt/dd/ command:
<tscreen><verb>
dd if=/mnt/cdrom/images/boot.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=1440k
</verb></tscreen>
On a system running DOS or Windows-9x, you need to use the <tt/RAWRITE.EXE/
program, which is found on the CD in the <tt/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 <tt><file>doc/HOWTO</file></tt> directory.
<sect1>Booting from a bootable CD<p>
Most modern machines are able to boot directly from a CD, provided it is
made bootable with the procedure outlined in section
<ref id="sec-bootable" name="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.
<sect>Other Linux distributions<p>
The information in this document also applies to other Linux distributions
that are RedHat clones, such as <url url="http://www.linux-mandrake.com"
name="Mandrake">, although we have not actually tried them ourself. The
Mandrake distributions uses a simpler <tt/hdgenlist/ program (it's a shell
script), and other details may be different.
The <url url="http://www.linuxppc.org" name="LinuxPPC"> 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 <url url="http://rufus.w3.org/linux/RPM/mkhybrid.html"
name="mkhybrid">) instead of <tt/mkisofs/. We have not tried it, but we'd
like to hear from people who have.
<sect>This document...<p>
The SGML source of the most recent version of this document can be
retrieved from <url url="http://imsb.au.dk/~mok/linux/doc/RedHat-CD.sgml">
(<url url="http://imsb.au.dk/~mok/linux/doc/RedHat-CD.html" name="HTML
version">).
You can link to the RedHat-CD mini HOWTO by making the following reference
on your home page:
<verb>
&lt;a href="http://imsb.au.dk/~mok/linux/doc/RedHat-CD.html"&gt;
&lt;img src="http://imsb.au.dk/~mok/logos/RedHat-CD.png" alt="RedHat CD mini-howto" height=30 nosave border=0&gt;
&lt;/a&gt;
</verb>
<sect1>Related documentation<p>
Ed Schlunder &lt;zilym@asu.edu&gt; has written a utility called
<tt/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 <tt/ls/ listing. See the <url
url="http://www.ajusd.org/~edward/fix-rhcd/" name="fix-rhcd homepage">.
Rod Smith &lt;smithrod@bellatlantic.net&gt; 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 <url
url="http://members.bellatlantic.net/~smithrod/rhjol.html">.
A document in french <em>``Comment graver un CD de la RedHat 5.x a partir
de fichiers telecharges sur Internet...''</em> by &lt;skooter@hol.fr&gt; is
available from <url
url="http://linuxfr.org/docs/article/gravure-CD-RH51.html">.
With the sense of the good things in life Jussi Torhonen from Finland
&lt;jussi.torhonen@tietosavo.fi&gt; tells us <url
url="http://www.iwn.fi/~jt/cd/" name="Howto make a homebrew"> bootable
RedHat Linux 5.2 CD-ROM.
>From the LDP project, see the
<url url="http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/CD-Writing-HOWTO.html"
name="CD-writing HOWTO">.
<sect1>Acknowledgements<p>
Apart from those mentioned above, thanks are given to the following
people for valuable input, feedback and discussions:
<itemize>
<item>Lars Christensen &lt;larsch@cs.auc.dk&gt;
<item>Thomas Duffy &lt;tbd@cs.brown.edu&gt;
<item>Dawn Endico &lt;dawn@math.wayne.edu&gt; <!-- Creating bootable CD -->
<item>Seva &lt;seva@null.cc.uic.edu&gt;
<item>Michael Thomas Cope &lt;mcope@orion.ac.hmc.edu&gt;
<item>Charles J. Fisher &lt;charles_fisher@bigfoot.com&gt;
<item>Eric Thomas &lt;eric.thomas@ericsson.com&gt;
<item>Gordon Yuen &lt;gdccyuen@yahoo.com&gt; <!-- Comments on RH6.1, 19991220 -->
</itemize>
<sect>DISCLAIMER<label id="sec-disclaimer"><p>
<bf>
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.
</bf>
</article>
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