Re: Fedora ISO problems
From: Georg Wittig (Georg.Wittig_at_zv.Fraunhofer.de)
Date: 12/28/03
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Date: 28 Dec 2003 23:16:49 +0100
"Gregory James" <gregoryj@the#world.com> writes:
> > Why do you burn those CDs at all? If you have a running Linux on your
> > box and the FC1 isos are on your HD, then installation of FC1 can be
> > done completely without any CD - just with the iso files. If you're
> > interested I can post the commands you need to get you started.
>
> That would be good information to have. Right now, the ISO's are on an old
> notebook drive that I've got running in one of those USB adapters.
O.k. Here we go.
The first iso file (yarrow-i386-disc1.iso) contains all the software
that is needed for the installation, not just the rpms. It just is
wrapped up pretty good. So first we gotta open that iso file to see
whats inside. We can do this as root with the following commands:
# mkdir /mnt/x
# mount -o loop /path/to/yarrow-i386-disc1.iso /mnt/x
#
This creates a new directory /mnt/x and mounts the iso file as a
so-called loop device to /mnt/x. [If mounting doesn't work you're
stuck because you either don't have a kernel that supports loop
devices, or your .iso file hasn't been copied correctly from the ftp
server.] Now we can see the contents of the iso file via the command
# ls /mnt/x
Fedora RPM-GPG-KEY TRANS.TBL
GPL RPM-GPG-KEY-beta autorun
README RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora dosutils
README-Accessibility RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora-rawhide eula.txt
RELEASE-NOTES RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora-test images
RELEASE-NOTES.html RPM-GPG-KEY-rawhide isolinux
#
Now we can proceed to step 2. In the above ls output we see a
directory called "images". Let's see what's in there
# ls /mnt/x/images
README boot.iso drvblock.img pcmciadd.img
TRANS.TBL bootdisk.img drvnet.img pxeboot
#
Most interesting for us is the file bootdisk.img. This is an image we
can copy to a floppy disc. It has been created for those people who
cannot install via CD. It contains a complete kernel and environment
for the installation of fedora via a floppy disc. So why does this
help us? Well, we *can* copy that image to a floppy disc, but we *need
not*. We can mount that file as a loop device again and see what's in
there.
# mkdir /mnt/y
# mount -o loop /mnt/x/images/bootdisk.img /mnt/y
#
This creates a new directory /mnt/y and mounts the bootdisk.img file
to another loop device /mnt/y. [I don't know if we can do similar
things with the other image files in that directory; I just verified
it with the bootdisk.img file.] Let's see what's inside /mnt/y:
# ls /mnt/y
boot.msg initrd.img options.msg rescue.msg splash.lss vmlinuz
general.msg ldlinux.sys param.msg snake.msg syslinux.cfg
#
Now we're almost there. This directory /mnt/y contains everything a
linux kernel needs to boot. And remember this isn't the Fedora Core 1
kernel itself, but a specially crafted kernel that is needed to
*install* Fedora. It is just needed to install Fedora, and I think it
cannot be used for much more.
So what should we do with it? When we try to install Fedora we cannot
mount loop devices first. The installation kernel must be available to
grub directly. So we just need to copy the contents of /mnt/y to a
place grub can find.
# mkdir /fc1-installer
# cp /mnt/y/* /fc1-installer
#
This copies the contents of the /mnt/y directory to a new directory I
called /fc1-installer. From now on we don't need the loop devices any
more. We can unmount and remove them (umount /mnt/y; umount /mnt/x;
rmdir /mnt/x /mnt/y).
The only thing that's left now is to configure grub (or lilo) such
that it can boot from the files in /fc1-installer. I use grub, so I
give an example of the lines I appended to my /boot/grub/grub.conf
file.
title Fedora Core 1 Installation Kernel
root (hd0,2)
kernel /fc1-installer/vmlinuz ro root=/dev/hda3
initrd /fc1-installer/initrd.img
Remember, this is just an example. You must adapt the hd values to
your situation.
Now reboot into the Fedora Installation Kernel. The usual installation
process should start. You should do an hd installation (or an ftp or
http installation) depending on where your 3 yarrow iso files are.
[Btw., after Fedora has been installed, you no longer need the
/fc1-installer directory. You can remove it completely then. Also, the
above lines I added to grub.conf aren't needed any longer once Fedora
is installed.]
Have fun!
--Georg
PS: This method works at least since RedHat 6. But I've never seen it
documented by RedHat or Fedora people. :-|
-- /"\ ASCII ribbon | Georg Wittig, FhG - Georg.Wittig@zv.Fraunhofer.de \ / campain against| Es gibt Tage, da verliert man; und X HTML e-mail and| es gibt Tage, da gewinnen die Anderen. / \ news | Der Bagger ist der natuerliche Feind des Internet.
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