Error creating RHEL5 cdrom for 64 bit machine
 

The aim of my task is to eventually create a customized minimum red hat installation (only base/core packages)


I have downloaded the RHEL 5 distribution for 64 bit amd/x86 machines and I have copied off all the data from the CDs onto my local harddrive (a 32 bit RHEL 4) machine. I run the mkisofs command to create a bootable iso with CD1 contents in it.

When I burn this CD and try to install on the target machine, after the first couple of steps (Language, keyboard) I get a prompt saying : "What type of media contains the packages to be installed?" with a list of possible media types.
I select CD ROM and the next screen gives me the following error message :
"The Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server CD was not found in any of your CDROM drives. Please insert the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server CD and press OK to retry."

At install time the other consoles show the following messages :
"starting to STEP_URL
trying to mount CD device hdc
ejecting /tmp/cdrom..."

and
"<7>ISO 9660 Extensions: Microsoft Joliet Level 3 <4>Unable to load NLS charset utf8 <4>Unable to load NLS charset utf8 <7>ISO 9660 Extensions: RRIP_1991A"

Questions :
1. What causes this error?
2. Must I perform the packaging on an environment identical to the target machine? (i.e. a 64 bit RHEL5 env, as opposed to a 32bit one? - tried it, doesnt work)
3. The distro is currently copied to directories like CD1, CD2 etc. When I use mkisofs, do I need to have the files under a particular name (like it used to be i386 for older RHEL versions)?
4. Since RHEL5 has a completely different directory structure etc (such as Server/*rpms, no base dir, no RPMS dir, no hdlist* files), what is actually required to create my own iso? Can I just package the CD1 like that? Do I have to perform any further steps?

Why???? This is already possible from the media without any changes. One just has to un-slect everything, if done correctly then only the first CD (or ISO image) is needed. After the first time then one can use the anaconda.ks.cfg file for additional installations.

For a reference see: http://wiki.centos.org/FAQ/CentOS5#q1

I'm having the same problem.

When I ran into this with RHEL4, the answer turned out to be the options I was calling mkisofs with. But the correct, working options for RHEL4 aren't helping me here.

What is the secret to creating a customized RHEL5 CD/DVD?

Missing .discinfo file
 

This error was because I was missing the .discinfo file in the base directory. This is what anaconda looks for to determine that the CD is a valid Red Hat install CD. Once I put this in, the installation went through fine.

Lenard, I was trying to create a custom installer that installed basic Red Hat and then went ahead and installed our company software on it. It had to be an automated installation so that our boxes could be mass installed with it in production.

thank you it was my problem now.

I was having the same issue, and the .discinfo file was indeed NOT in the root directory. I recreated an image with this file and was able to successfully load a system with a kickstart file on this new image.

You Da Man!
 

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!! I've been working on this issue for 3 days and I finally found the answer after many Googles... That'll teach me not to come to this site first!