[CentOS] Creating an alternitive install CD for CentOS 5.2 (w/ patched mkinitrd)

Sat Mar 7 15:48:29 UTC 2009
Richard Karhuse <rkarhuse at gmail.com>

On Sat, Mar 7, 2009 at 10:08 AM, Robert Heller <heller at deepsoft.com> wrote
>
> This seems overly complex for my needs.  I don't want (or need) to
> rebuild all 6 of the install CDs.  I just want to *replace* one RPM on
> the first CD.  I have copied the CD's directory tree to a writable file
> system and replaced the rpm in question.  I now need to just make a new
> ISO file and all I need is the proper command line arguments to mkisofs
> to do this.  I am *NOT* creating a new distribution.  And I really don't
> want to mess with a complex GUI program or edit many configuration
> files.
>
> I would also rather do this on my CentOS 4.7 system (revisor does not
> seem to be available for CentOS 4 / RHEL 4).  Running it on a diskless
> workstation with a read-only root file system is a total pain.  And will
> become even more painful when I then have to mount a large file system
> with NFS.
>

First of all, if you replace an RPM, you'll need to do createrepro.

        disc_info=`head -1 $BASE/$ARCH/.discinfo`
        createrepo -v --baseurl="$disc_info" -g repodata/comps.xml $ARCH

If the RPM is a "system RPM", then you probably want to do a
buildinstall first to get it into the anaconda system (and get a new
disc_info),
a la:

       $BASE/buildinstall --debug \
	--version 5 --product 'CentOS' --release "CentOS 5" \
	--prodpath CentOS $BASE/$ARCH 2>&1

If all you want is a mkisofs, what's wrong with the "man" command??

Maybe something like:

    mkisofs -q -r -R -J -T -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -pad       \
        -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat -boot-info-table \
        -V "$VER ($date)"                                         \
        -A "$REL - $VER - $firmware"                              \
        -publisher "$PUB" -p "$PUB" -x lost+found                 \
        -o "CentOS-$VER-$date.iso" $ARCH 	2>&1

... reboot, lather, rinse and repeat .... :-) :=)

You may find "re-generating" the CentOS CDs/DVD quite easy at
times and very frustrating and complex at others ......

HTH

   -rak-