Possible to combine CD iso images on 1 DVD?

[fos]

Is it possible to combine multiple CD iso images on 1 DVD?

fos

[danieldk]

That depends. Copying files from multiple ISO files, and building a new ISO with that is certainly possible. Though, if the ISOs are different operating systems or Linux distributions, you will have to set up the bootloader (e.g. ISOLinux) to be able to boot multiple kernels.

[fos]

It is strictly a convenience. The FreeBSD 6.2 RC2 is on two CDs. I wondered what would be involved to combine it into one DVD.

fos....

[danieldk]

You can copy the files from both CDs to one CD, and regenerate the iso, giving the correct parameters for the boot blocks. How this can be done with a FreeBSD tree is documented at:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/creating-cds.html

Especially note the "-no-emul-boot -b boot/cdboot" parameters. Though, if I recall correctly, the second CD is just a live system. So, it my be more useful to copy the whole 6.2RC2 tree from a mirror, including the "packages" directory (making sure that you don't just copy the packages symlink from FTP), and build a DVD from that. In that manner, you will have a CD with FreeBSD 6.2RC2 with all precompiled packages.

The only problem being that it won't fit on a DVD, because the precompiled packages are around 15GB, so you'll have to make a selection and regenerate the package index.

[danieldk]

Hmm, I may be wrong about CD2. Anyway, I think this is what you are looking for ;):
http://www.pa.msu.edu/~tigner/bsddvd.html

PS. If it's to much work, or don't have a working FreeBSD system around, I can also do it and send a DVD to Leon. Let me know if you guys need help :).

[fos]

That link is the info I needed. Thanks

I already have the CDs burned. I'll go ahead and send them out tomorrow. If he still wants the DVD, I'll combine them and send them in a day or so.

fos

[danieldk]

The procedure that is outlined worked well (though, I didn't try their growisofs stanza, since I am pretty sure that you want rock ridge extensions). For those who are interested, this is the table of contents of the combined CDs:

http://danieldk.org/misc/6.2-RC2-DVD.txt.gz

(gzipped to save bandwidth)

Of particular interest is the packages/All directory :). It includes most of the GNOME and KDE desktop stuff.

[Leon]

That link is the info I needed. Thanks

I already have the CDs burned. I'll go ahead and send them out tomorrow. If he still wants the DVD, I'll combine them and send them in a day or so.

fos

I am interested in getting a DVD both to speed up installation and to have as many of the archive offerings available as possible. Does the commercial DVD offered by FreeBSD Mall just combine the basic CD ISO's, or does it include additional apps?

[danieldk]

According to this listing:
http://www.freebsdmall.com/lists/FreeBSD-6.1-DVD.txt.bz2

their DVD includes a lot more than the two publically available ISOs combined, which misses even some basic things like the GIMP, let alone Apache, MySQL, or other server software.

Though, with some work, it should be possible to build a comparable DVD or a custom package set. I have to add that some of the money of the FreeBSD Mall DVD goes to the FreeBSD project, and they regularly hire FreeBSD project members, like Murray Stokely who has done a tremendous job improving the documentation, was release engineer, and member of the core team.

[Leon]

Daniel: thanks. What stopped me from getting the 6.1 DVD from FreeBSD Mall was a sequence of visits to the veterinarian; now it is the imminent release of 6.2.

It seems to take 6-8 months after a FreeBSD release before the DVD is available commercially.

I am not against paying to support development of a good distribution - I paid for every Libranet release even when I had already gotten the final RC's. I am still considering buying the 6.1 DVD, but I would also like to install 6.2 so I can be on the same page with you, "fos" and other users. I am looking forward to some good discussions here.

[danieldk]

If I have some time, I will look if there is an easy way to build a more extended ISO, to the point that you could say "I want KDE, GNOME, and x, y, and z". It would be fun to script :).

[danieldk]

Ah, yes, that would be easy :). Do you have a list of "must-have"'s? That would be a lot easier than automatically trying to make a list of relevant ports, that also fit on the CDs.

[danieldk]

I have modified a script to make an INDEX file from a list of ports, e.g.:


archivers/unzip
astro/xearth
databases/mysql50-server
databases/mysql51-client
databases/mysql51-server
databases/php5-mysql
devel/gmake
editors/emacs
editors/nxml-emacs21
editors/openoffice.org-2.0
[...]


and another script to fetch the packages in the INDEX from ftp. So, I can now build package trees with correct index files, combined with the base operating system from CD1 it is a full-fledged customized FreeBSD DVD :).