Topic: Custom ISO of 5.5

[Bob Todd]

I'd like to take the July iso and apply all the updates to it and add additional tools to it that I use - I am rebuilding servers once a day atm as I evaluate various add-ons and it would be handy to have the iso all setup and ready to go. Is this the best way of doing this or should I be installing a cdrw and using Norton Ghost to clone a standard build to cdr?

[Jeff C]

Both of those options are reasonable.  

IMHO, the best solution for a development environment is VMWare (http://www.vmware.com).

I have a base configuration set to a non-persistant disk.  When I am done playing I simply recycle the virtual box on my Win2K host machine and can start fresh in under 1 minute.

I have done as many as 20-30 configurations in a day with this product and it is rock solid.  Not free, but well worth the money if you work in this area.

-jeff

[bud]

Custom builds are best.  That way you can install on different hardware.

Ghost is ok for different hard drive sizes, but isn't good for (RAID/no-RAID), different MB's, Nic's, etc.

[John E. Phillips]

I have been using VMware for all my E-smith testing.  With the lastest SME 5.6b, I get the following error.....

        Could not allocate requested partitions:
         Partitioning failed: Could not allocate
        partitions as primary partitions.

Any ideas?

[Jeremy McNicoll]

I had the same problem when I tried to let vmware try to boot the ESmith CD from the cdrom.  So I made a boot floppy and did a customized ks.cfg file on the floppy.  This worked flawlessly.  Check out the following messages.

Basically I did the following:
1) burn the latest cd 5.6B8
2) rawrite the boot.img file to a floppy
3) put the following file ks.cfg on the floppy

---KS.CFG----
# language
lang en_US

# install method
cdrom

# keyboard
keyboard us

# networking
network --bootproto static --ip 192.168.1.1 --netmask 255.255.255.0
--gateway 192.168.1.2 --nameserver 127.0.0.1

# partitioning parameters
zerombr yes
clearpart --all
part /boot --size 100 --ondisk sda
part / --size 500 --ondisk sda
part /usr --size 2800 --ondisk sda
part /tmp --size 200 --grow --ondisk sda
part swap --size 512 --ondisk sda
part /var --size 3000 --ondisk sdb
part /home --size 10000 --grow --ondisk sdb

# install
install

# mouse
mouse none

# time zone
timezone --utc US/Eastern

# root password
rootpw default
auth --useshadow --enablemd5

# boot loader
lilo --location mbr

%packages
@ Base

%post
# set up initial configuration
/sbin/e-smith/signal-event post-install
# add comment to /etc/motd
echo "Welcome to the e-smith server and gateway." > /etc/motd


---- end ---
Thats about it. Hope this helps
-reboot the vm with the floppy and your off....