LinuxQuestions.org - FC6 without burning CDs

this is how i installed fedora using minimal iso images
which are kept on hard disk without using Cds .
the main idea is to use creatrepo and yum program
to install software from a hardisk repository

download disc1 & disc2 iso images .
put disc1 on a partition with ex2
or fat32 file system .
if such partition doesn't exist ,
make it at size 1 GB using fdisk and mkfs .

booting installation :
mount disc1 using loop device :

Code:

mount FC*~*disc1.iso /mnt/iso -o loop

cp /mnt/iso/isolinux/vmlinuz /mnt

cp /mnt/iso/isolinux/initrd.img /mnt

don't know if windows has tool for reading iso
filesystem , if not then burn the first disc .

boot /mnt/vmlinuz & initrd.img using lilo or
grub console (let root be /dev/hda5 ):

Code:

root=(hd0,4)

kernel=/mnt/vmlinuz 

initrd=/mnt/initrd.img

windows users can use loadlin .

choose install media from hard disk and specify
on what partition you have the iso file ,the
basic idea is to use only disc1 for installation .
if you put the iso image on filesystem like
reiserfs or NTFS then installer program will faill
to read them , so use ext2 or fat32 .

at anaconda stage choose to customize
package selection because anaconda will abort
all installation even at an advanced stage
if it cannot find some package on install media
uncheck all software groups , only check base group
and from base uncheck all optional packages , only
keep yum .
because minimal package selection have been done
the installation will finish in few minutes .

since Xorg haven't been installed , fedora
will boot into runlevel 3 ( see /etc/inittab )
log as root to get linux console .
let partition where iso exist be /dev/hda5
and let createrepo*~*.rpm be there too

Code:

mkdir /mnt/hd

mount /dev/hda5 /mnt/hd

mount /mnt/hd/*~*FC*~*disc1.iso /mnt/iso1 -o loop

mount /mnt/hd/*~*FC*~*disc2.iso /mnt/iso2 -o loop

mkdir /mnt/fedora/

mkdir /mnt/fedora/RPMS

ln -s /mnt/iso1/Fedora/RPMS/* /mnt/fedora/RPMS

ln -s /mnt/iso2/Fedora/RPMS/* /mnt/fedora/RPMS

yum localinstall /mnt/hd/*~*createrepo*~*.rpm

cd /mnt/fedora

createrepo .

to configure yum to use it edit files at
/etc/yum.repo.d/ like this :

Code:

vi fedora-core.repo

[core]

name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch

baseurl=file:///mnt/fedora

#baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/$releasever/$basearch/os/

#mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=core-$releasever&arch=$basearch

enabled=1

gpgcheck=1

gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY

edit all other repo files making enabled=0 keeping
only fedora-core.repo with 1 .

complete installing packages , try to install
only what you really need by choosing package
of a certain dependancy level , at some
stage this local repository will be abandoned
for a public mirror for installing packages
that are not in disc1 or disc2

Xorg

Code:

yum deplist xorg-x11-twm

yum install xorg-x11-twm

configuration

Code:

yum install firstboot

gnome

Code:

yum install gedit

edit /etc/inittab and choose runlevel 5
you can switch using init 3 , init 5
conifure system from System->Administration