[clug] making a bootable Red Hat 9 installation DVD?

[Gavin Owen]

The raw materials:
The 3 Red Hat 9 binary install CDs
A Sony DVD burner (does + and - R and RW)
A blank DVD+RW disc

The challenge:
Mix the above ingredients into a tasty Red Hat 9 bootable DVD

The motivation:
1. DVD installs are noticably faster than CD installs (SuSE DVD install
observation
2. No CD swapping needed
3. Because I want to, for the sake of something to do. I usually do
network installs myself..but hey I've got this DVD burner at work
now...so y'know the challenge is just taunting me!

The reward:
I am happy to burn the finished product for all CLUG 'members' who don't
have access to a DVD+-RW and can supply me with a blank DVD+R or DVD+RW
(or -R -RW but don't ask me the difference!) I can also update the CD
with the latest RH9 Errata (which I rsync reguarly off
mirror.aarnet.edu.au).

The initial attempt:
The DVD burner is hooked up to a Windows2k install. I have a trial
version of Nero Burning ROM on there which can burn DVDs.

I copied all 3 CDs to one directory and updated the TRANS.TBL in the
RPMS directory to cover all the files in there. I left the .discinfo
from the first CD in the base directory.

I fired up Nero and chose DVD(boot) (or something like that). I stuck a
bootdisk.img floppy in the FDD and chose floppy boot emulation, and
dragged my install files to the DVD burning list. I then burnt the disc.

I booted the DVD in another machine and it kinda worked. The red text
came up green for some reason. After I hit enter the kernel loaded up
and the installer started but said it couldn't find any of the install
files. Methinks that the initrd.img doesn't have support for the
underlying filesystem (UDF I imagine). I'm going update the initrd with
a UDF filesystem module and see how that goes....back to the drawing
board...