Building an LCFG install CD

These instructions require you to be using an FC5 machine and have installed a new-ish version of lcfg-buildinstallroot (0.99.19-1 or better).

The buildinstallroot script unfortunately MUST be run as root as it needs to be able to run rdxprof and mknod. The issue of running as root means you must NEVER run the script on a server or important machine in case there is a bug which ends up doing rm -rf / or the equivalent on the wrong directory...

Help can be found with the --help option:

[berwick]root: /usr/sbin/buildinstallroot --help
buildinstallroot: version 0.99.20

Usage: buildinstallroot  [ --root rootdir ] [ -o isofile ]
      [ --url url ] [ --profile profile ] [ --cd defaultcd ] [ --verbose ]
      [ --force ] [ -V ] [ --release releasename ] [ --help ]

To build an install CD for FC5 you would do something like:

/usr/sbin/buildinstallroot -o /tmp/lcfginstall-fc5-develop-20060919.iso

If you do not specify the -o option you will get an install in the root directory but no image.

If there is already a root directory you need --force to erase the old directory first.

When you are finished you will be left with a load of stuff in the root directory (/r by default). You may well want to delete this to save disk space and keep things tidy.

Naming the image

For a "stable" release image, the generated image should be named like lcfginstall-osname-releasenumber.iso, e.g.

lcfginstall-fc5-2006071001.iso

For any other release it should be lcfginstall-osname-release-releasenumber.iso, e.g.:

lcfginstall-fc5-develop-2006071001.iso

Storing the images

For "stable" CD images put them into the AFS MPU group directory /afs/inf.ed.ac.uk/group/mp-unit/cdroms/. For other releases put the images into /afs/inf.ed.ac.uk/group/mp-unit/cdroms/devel.

When you upload a new "stable" CD image you should run the makelinks script in the directory /afs/inf.ed.ac.uk/group/mp-unit/cdroms/ to update the symbolic links that point to the latest releases.

Building other releases

If you want to build a different release other than "stable" then you can do this via the --release option:

/usr/sbin/buildinstallroot --force --release fc5-testing -o /tmp/lcfginstall-fc5-testing-releasenum.iso

or alternatively you can use the --profile option:

/usr/sbin/buildinstallroot --force --profile installroot-fc5-testing -o /tmp/lcfginstall-fc5-testing-releasenum.iso

You can do similar things to specify fc3 rather than fc5:

/usr/sbin/buildinstallroot --force --release fc3 -o /tmp/lcfginstall-fc3-releasenum.iso

Writing to media

To write a DVD use growisofs

growisofs -Z /dev/dvd=/tmp/lcfginstall-fc5-testing-2006091901.iso

to write a CD use cdrecord

cdrecord dev=/dev/cdwriter /tmp/lcfginstall-fc5-testing-2006091901.iso

-- StephenQuinney - 19 Sep 2006

-- ChrisCooke - 28 Aug 2007

-- StephenQuinney - 1 Jun 2011