Customized Boot Disk creation
 

Hello, I have read through the many different articles describing how to create a boot disk and have yet to come accross one that meets what it is I am trying to accomplish, so pardon me if I missed an article.

First some information about my server.
I have a custom server which runs an older version of redhat 7.2 that has been modified to use the hardware specific to this server. Raid controllers and additional network settings. 250Gb SATA drive

I do not have a CD-R on this server so I would need to create an ISO on the server FTP to another server and burn the ISO from there.

I am going to build out a few more servers configured exactly as the server I am trying to make a CD of.

I have tried using Nortons Ghost but becuase Ghost cannot recognize the disk properly the only workable method is to use the -ia -noide options which creates a byte by byte image of the entire 250GB disk.... (not a workable solution as it is too big.)

I have tried creating a boot diskette using
mkbootdisk `uname -r` but the files are too large to fit on a boot diskette

I then tried to make a ISO image using the following
mkisofs -r -J -T -v -V "Red Hat 7.2 myserver" -c boot.cat -b boot/initrd-2.4.20-28smp.img -no-emul -o /home/images-destination-dir/rh7.2-netserver.iso .
this creates an ISO image that is too large for a single CD as well
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1686863872 Aug 25 04:59 rh7.2-myserver.iso

What I would like to do ideally is:
1.Create a Bootable CD that has all the modules needed to use the Raid and network configurations that are currently on the server.

and or

create a image of the entire system (only used files)
5.6M bin
5.5M boot
244k dev
1.0k doit.sh
3.5M etc
1.0k initrd
16M install
95M lib
12k lost+found
1.0k misc
179k mnt
1.0k opt
119k root
8.4M sbin
11M tmp
537M usr
30M var
As you can see not a lot of used space.

----
If I can create a Boot diskette with just the minimal reuqirements and then read a tar or dd image of the files to install then that would be great.
Problem is bootable disks are too large to fit on a 1.44 MB floppy and all attempts to format it to be larger and still eb bootable failed.
I tried this https://lists.dulug.duke.edu/piperma...ry/003957.html
which did not work.

Any ideas as to what I can do ?
Thank you in advance

There's a lot of ways to do this without reinventing the wheel. If you have an external usb hard drive, a very easy method would be to get a bootable livecd like slax, kanotix or knoppix, connect your external hard drive, boot off the cd and just tar up your current install to the external hard drive. Then boot up your live cd again on your new system and restore the tar archive to the appropriate partition(s) on the new system. Most modern livcds should have no problem recognizing your current hardware.

You could also use partimage which comes standard on a lot of livecds instead of tar to create image files. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, check out what x64Jimbo(see user comments) did to remaster slax livecd using the partimage module to create a livedvd to automatically restore his windows installation:

http://www.slax.org/modules.php?cate...name=Partimage

That procedure could easily be adapted to your situation if you have dvd drives on your boxes.

The only thing you would need to add is the installation of the bootloader to the mbr of the new box. I know how to do that with lilo using a livecd but I imagine grub should be even easier. Actually you could back up your current mbr and bootloader using dd and restore it to the new box before doing your restore.