How to use an .iso file
 

Hi,

My system crashed a few days ago on fedora 18 and had to reinstall it. I have upgraded it to fedora 19 right now.
Anyway, before doing anything, I took an image of all the packages I had installed (and they were all in one directory) in an iso fie on a DVD.

My question is: is there any way to use the iso file to get everything back and not re-install all those packages?

Sorry me if it seems so dummy!

Let's start over with the real question. Can you take some single directory in Fedora and re-create all the applications that were installed?

I think the answer is no but tell us what you copied.







An iso is a misleading term. Most people use the word .iso as a type of file that represents a cd or dvd. You don't have an iso. You have some disk with information on it.

Thanks for your reply.

I had a directory called packages in /home, I had my packages there and I basically installed them all there.
I just made an iso file using "mkisofs" and then burnt them to a dvd by "growisofs"

PS. your signature is just so true but "the boss" himself is a "big pain" ;)

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=139773

http://linux.about.com/od/nwb_guide/a/gdenwb01t82_2.htm

growisofs is a fork of mkisofs. Which can be a little distracting since debian doesn't have mkisofs anymore. But the options for mkisofs work the same with growisofs for creating iso files. On to a possible answer I guess.

You can mount an iso image and copy the files from it. Depending on the contents of the iso image, audio disc images are a special type.

# mount -t iso9660 -o loop file.iso /mnt/point

Or if you burn the image you can mount the optical drive.

# mount /dev/sr0 /mnt/point

I guess it depends on what's there and how you intend to use it. The iso filesystem has limits. No single file > 4GB. 8.3 character limit for names, which you can workaroud with the juliet / rockridge extension. But if you didn't use that when you created the image, it could mess you up a bit.

You are telling you had installed packages in a directory called home/packages. what exactly you mean by installed?

If you mean, you have self contained packages like freerapid, zotero etc, which can be executed by prefixing ./ to the executing file, then you can just copy back from iso to its original place or wherever, it will open just fine

But if you had installed packages by using yum, rpm or make install, then you have to repeat the process again, I guess, as the files relating to that particular package will be installed on multiple directories like /bin, /usr/bin, /usr/share/man/ etc.

Except that unless the library versions are all the same, dynamically linked executables might fail.

We still need to separate the two issues.

One is the iso deal. That has nothing to do with the need to get the packages back. I have no idea why you did that but it has been posted above as how to mount or access that data now.

I have to make an assumption that you are not an advanced user. A very advanced user could do what you want.

Back to the packages deal. I'd say we kind of think that you won't be able to do this. The most simple answer is that I suspect you have what is wrongly termed an RPM. The Red Hat Package Manager is a sort of cookbook for adding an application. The problem is the cookbook might at some point tell the installer to look at a different page. If you don't have access to that page then the application install will fail as noted above.
You can use this disk as a source. It will allow you to do one by one installs of those apps if you also have access to the internet. I'd assume there might be a way to automate this but I don't play with fedora enough to know.

See this for some ideas on how an .rpm works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPM_Package_Manager


I suppose that if we called it the RHPM, we'd get sued.