ncftp is a great tool to recursively download RedHat Linux distribution:
To get it from RedHat:
cd /tmp ncftp -r -R \ ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/redhat-5.2/i386 &To get it from Funet:
cd /tmp ncftp -r -R \ ftp://ftp.funet.fi/mirrors/ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/redhat-5.2/i386 &For other RedHat mirrors, just refer RedHat MIRRORS document
ncftp sources are available from ftp://ftp.ncftp.com/ncftp/
chmod -R 755 /tmp/i386 chown -R root:root /tmp/i386Note: if you don't need GNOME sources, you can leave the off now:
rm -Rf /tmp/i386/gnome/SRPMSInstead you might want to collect some other goodies into the same CD-ROM: KDE, StarOffice, WP8, Oracle8, IngresII, contrib binaries + sources, ...
mkisofs sources are available from ftp://andante.jic.com/pub/mkisofs/
If you're using RedHat 5.x, you can update mkisofs from glibc2 based RedHat 5.2 distribution that you just downloaded:
rpm -Uvh /tmp/i386/RedHat/RPMS/mkisofs-1.12b4-1.i386.rpm
cd /tmp/i386
mkisofs -b images/boot.img -c boot.catalog \
-o /tmp/rh52img.iso \
-J -r -T \
-p RedHat_Linux \
-P www.redhat.com \
-A RedHat_Linux_5.2_GPL_version \
-V RH52GPL \
.
Note: if you collect some extra software (as KDE,
contrib src/bin, ...) into the same directory structure to have them on the
same CD-ROM as well, don't let the image file to grow bigger than
332500 blocks (each 2048 bytes - makes 680960000 bytes). Some CD-R
programs and/or CD-R disks doesn't allow bigger images. It just depends.
mkdir /mnt/redhat-5.2 mount -t iso9660 -o loop /tmp/rh52img.iso /mnt/redhat-5.2 ls -l /mnt/redhat-5.2 umount /mnt/redhat-5.2
You can use Linux or Win32 based CD-R applications to do it. For example Adaptec EasyCD v3.5b and Gear v4.2 does the job fine.
Note: EasyCD v3.0x -> v3.5b patch is freely available from Adaptec (actually here)
The CD-ROM has long filename support for Win32 (Joliet) and unix (Rock Ridge). Linux itself supports both of those ISO-9660 extensions since 2.0.3x (who remembers ?) kernel.
CD-ROM you just made, is bootable one. If you pc can boot from the CD-ROM drive, just setup bios boot parameters to allow that, insert CD-ROM into the drive and reboot to install.
If your CD-ROM is not bootable, you must make install disks as described in /doc/rhmanual/manual/doc091.htm#sB document on the CD-ROM.
For a FTP, NFS or SMB network installation you can mount the CD-ROM into some other unix system. HP-UX supports Rock Ridge via PFS (Portable File System - see 'man pfs_mount'). Digital Unix supports it directly (see 'man mount') just like Linux. Perhaps some other unix variants do the same - I cannot say more.