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How to make a boot CD based on the floppy for Red Hat Linux installs:

Make a fullsized image since mkisofs needs it:
dd if=<etherboot image name> conv=sync of=cdimage.img bs=1440k
Burn a bootable CD:
[ -e /tmp/bootcd/ ] && rm -rf /tmp/bootcd/ mkdir /tmp/bootcd/ cp cdimage.img /tmp/bootcd/ mkisofs -b cdimage.img -c bootcat /tmp/bootcd/ | \ cdrecord -dev 0,0,0 -v -eject
(you will need to put the right cdrecord options in)
Boot CD

Then, to make network installations, using PXE or etherboot, follow the instructions on http://etherboot.sourceforge.net for setting up your DHCP and TFTP servers, and you are set.

There is a 'trick' is to make a TFTP image that etherboot wants from the boot images which Red Hat provides.

To make tftp-bootable images, use the vmlinuz and initrd.img from the images/pxeboot directory on the first CD image; run: mknbi-linux --append="ks= ramdisk_size=12000" vmlinuz \ images/pxeboot/initrd.img > etherboot.img where any kernel args may be placed in append string.

Put the etherboot.img in the location you have the dhcp server setup to point and you're set for a wholly network based installation, without pesky media issues or expense.

Loosely based on a post by Michael Fulbright at Red Hat

This is not wholly free of issues. With a 'hard case' NetServer with a crappy Cirrus video card booting from SCSI CD which I test on, we get hangs:

Instructions per
/usr/share/doc/redhat-release-8.0/RELEASE-NOTES-i386
[ -e /tmp/isolinux/ ] && rm -rf /tmp/isolinux/ mkdir /tmp/isolinux/ cd /pub/install/ftpinstall cp -r ./isolinux/ /tmp/isolinux/ mkisofs -o /tmp/boot-cdboot.img -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c \ isolinux/boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 \ -boot-info-table -R -J -V -T /tmp/isolinux/ sudo cdburn /tmp/boot-cdboot.img
Note: We have a script which loop-mounts downloaded ISO installation images at mountpoint: /pub/install/ftpinstall; cdburn is a 'wrapper' shell script to hand the proper options to cdrecord, automatically.

See also: bootp-dhcp-ks.html
Ap-Sy-disklessboot.html

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Other Voices

http://cfm.gs.washington.edu/~adioso/HOWTO/RedHat/RHCustomCD.xml rev 021217 RPH
http://www.owlriver.com/tips/bootableCDinstall/

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Last modified: Tue, 06 Apr 2004 11:19:36 -0400
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