I've been searching everywhere I can to find some info about remastering RHEL5, with additional RPMs to be added to the new ISO.

So far, all I've found is that genhdlist has been dropped from RHEL5 in favor of yum and createrepo. But I don't know enough about how yum and createrepo replaces genhdlist (to rebuild the hdlist files).

I've searched here, but all the references I found to remastering are out-of-date and don't help with RHEL5.

Any pointers to tutorials, hints, or specific steps would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Maybe this provides an outline. Start at " Understanding Package Metadata".

Thanks! This is some great info I had not seen yet, and presented well.

The only thing I'm still stuck at, is regenerating the hdlist/hdlist2 files. RHEL5 no longer includes the genhdlist program in the anaconda distribution.

From the document above:
Does anyone know if this is the case for RHEL5 w/anaconda-11.1.2.87-1 ?

I haven't tried burning a new DVD yet, without updating the hdlist files. I didn't want to start burning DVDs unless I have some confidence I'm not wasting a stack of blank media.

I may try burning one or two today to find out if I need the hdlist files.

Thanks again for the info.

Maybe this centos.org forum thread?

Aha!

Thank you! That makes sense now!!

1 members found this post helpful.

When you're done, please post your steps as a short "HOWTO" here? TIA

That's a deal!

While I'm not new to Linux, I am a LinuxQuestions.org newbie. The way I understand it, I post the tutorial here, then a moderator will approve/move it to the Tutorials section. Is that accurate?

My first DVD failed; the added RPMs did not get installed. I've got a couple of ideas and will be trying them today.

No, I just meant "post your steps here" as not to scare you off writing a tutorial ;-p Tutorials are handled separately from posts, if you *do* want to write a tutorial (excellent!) you can submit it here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/sendmessage.php

Still working on this. Other work is getting in the way.

I am planning to write the tutorial. In fact, most of it's done because I've been documenting what I do (for the rest of my team) and is a great starting point for the tutorial.

And Avocent KVM over IP does NOT work with DVD ISOs!

I was having massive problems with ISOs I created when I mounted them as virtual media on our Avocent KVM. Well... They don't support DVD media, neither physical media nor ISOs.

I believe I'll have this worked out quickly now that I know where the problem is. The problem wasn't how I created the ISO; it was the Avocent KVM corrupting the data from the virtual media.

That's a sad way to find out. I'd hammer their support for a fix. Especially since they do support CDR and external USB devices.

One of the guys here says that Avocent has a firmware fix (issued this month) that's supposed to fix this. We'll see. In the meantime, struggling on. My DVD produced an error related to the additional packages that I'm tracking down now.

i seem to be having the same problem with createrepo
can't seem to come up with the correct options for paths to be resolved
correctly - could you please post the command(s) you did?
thanks!

I'm still having problems building a successful ISO.

I did, however, use full paths to resolve everything. At least createrepo runs without generating any errors.

cd ${CDBASE}
createrepo --baseurl="${BASEURL}" -o . -g ${COMPSDIR}/comps.xml ${RPMDIR}

where:
CDBASE is the base directory for the content.
BASEURL is the "media://#######.######" from the .discinfo file on the first CD.
COMPSDIR is where you will put comps.xml.
RPMDIR is the directory where the RPMs reside.

Note that the output directory (-o .) is the CD base.

Unfortunately, I've had to put this on hold a little while 'cause we recently had two of our UNIX admins resign, and the workload is getting a bit heavier. :-(

Thanks for the response
I tried the same createrepo as you mentioned (as well as many others)
and could not get it to put the Fedora directory in the href no matter
what i tried
the install fails because it can't find any rpm files since it isn't looking
in the Fedora subdirectory
the only fix i could com up was:
unzip the primary.xml.gz
edit all entrys of href to look like
href="Fedora/packagename.rpm"
compute a new sha1sum
zip the file
compute a zipped sha1sum
find the date of the new primary.xml.gz file (as time since epoch)
and finally edit the repomod.xml file and replace the
original 2 checksums and timestamp with the new ones

seems a bit much ... must be an easier way - but this did work
the version of createrepo is 0.4.9 (for fc7 & fc8)
is there something wrong with it, or am i still using it incorrectly ?
the duke linux site has newer versions, but i was a little leary of trying to update the one that comes with fc7/8