#mv cds DVD

Hollaaaaaaaa....

Yesterday i was trying to make a DVD out of my 5 RHEL 5.0 CDs. During the process i ended up losing my two plain DVD's.
But the most interesting thing is that i finally found the solution :). And i thought i must publish it cause i dont want
any other person to have the same difficulties i encountered.

alrights, lets get started...

I am creating a directory to copy all the RHEL 5.0 CDs

#mkdir /tmp/RHEL5_DVD

Loop mount the individual ISO images to any directory

#mount -o loop /path/to/iso1.iso /mnt

then copy the first CD contents to /tmp/RHEL5_DVD

#cd /mnt
#cp -r * /tmp/RHEL5_DVD

make sure you copied the .discinfo file also

#cp .discinfo /tmp/RHEL5_DVD

now unmount /mnt and mount the second iso.

#mount -o loop /path/to/iso2.iso /mnt

then copy all the rpm files inside /mnt/Server to /tmp/RHEL5_DVD/Server

#cp /mnt/Server/*.rpm /tmp/RHEL5_DVD/Server

we need to append the contents of the TRANS.TBL file found inside /mnt/Server to that inside /tmp/RHEL5_DVD/Server

#cat /mnt/Server/TRANS.TBL >> /tmp/RHEL5_DVD/Server/TRANS.TBL

NOTE:We are going to make a single TRANS.TBL file with all the TRANS.TBL files inside every isos.

Do the same thing for third, fourth and fifth iso files.

while copying the fifth iso file's contents, you should copy the rpm files under /mnt/VT/ to /tmp/RHEL5_DVD/VT
and append the TRANS.TBL file found under /mnt/Server/VT to /tmp/RHEL5_DVD/VT/TRANS.TBL

Now edit the .discinfo file inside the directory /tmp/RHEL5_DVD
to change the fourth line from 1 to 1,2,3,4,5

NOTE: If you miss any cd number, then installation would prompt you to insert that cd.
So you must include all the cd numbers correctly!

Now we must create the ISO image of the /tmp/RHEL5_DVD directory.

Free some 3 GB space in your HDD as the entire build would make an iso file of size
no less than 2.6 GB.

#cd /tmp/RHEL5_DVD

I assume you are creating the iso image inside /DVD directory.

#mkisofs -o /DVD/rhel5dvd.iso -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat
-no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -J -r .

NOTE the . at the end of the previous command which specifies the current directory.

the -b flag to mkisofs command specifies the path and filename of the boot
image to be used when making the bootable iso.

the -c flag specifies the path and filename of the boot
catalog.

Now to burn the DVD, use the growisofs command.

#growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvdwriter-hdc=/DVD/rhel5dvd.iso

NOTE: dd (disk duplicator) command can also be used to burn the iso image.
#dd if=/DVD/rhel5dvd.iso of=/dev/dvdwriter-hdc obs=32k seek=0
(plain DVDs and DVD burners are not that cheap here in my locality.. :D)
consult the man page of dd for more information.

make changes to the DVD device. I have plugged the DVD as secondary master in
my desktop PC.

the = sign used in the growisofs command finalized the DVD disc.

linuxly yours....

~mj0vy