Hi Ted, Thanks a lot for putting this all together nicely. It was very useful and handy when I was trying to download/burn Fedora and Whitebox today. The linuxiso.org link is pretty nice and explains various issues (like what md5sum does etc) in details... I am burning my linux cds from windows side using the roxio cd creator and I guess its all damn easy ! There is a utility md5summer.exe for windows (see http://linuxiso.org/viewdoc.php/verifyiso.html) that functions similar to the md5sum program on linux. The speed is nice here and every image is taking not more than about 20mins.
Its all fun and I had never imagined in my life that system administrative tasks are so much enjoyable ! Amruta > Lately I have been burning some CDs with various Linux distributions on > them, and thought it might be a good time to put together a short set of > notes, because every time I do this I usually have to re-learn at least a > few things. > > As a general point, most Linux distributions will make available "iso" > images for download. You can think of these as downloadable CDs. So you > have to download these files and then copy (burn) them onto a blank CD. > I have been doing this on Linux, and some of what follows is specific to > that platform (especially use of cdrecord). > > ------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- > First, you must locate your Linux iso. Each Linux distribution will have > their own iso files, so in effect this means choosing your Linux > distribution. If you don't already have a favorite, you can go to a > repository like > > http://linuxiso.org > > This contains links to many of the most popular linux distributions, and > also has direct links to sites that contain the necessary iso files. > > Or, you can go to the individual distribution sites. I have been using > Mandrake and White Box Linux quite a bit the last 6 months, and you can > find them here... > > http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en-us/ > > http://whiteboxlinux.net/news.php > > On both of these pages you can find download links that will take you to > various mirror sites that contain the iso files. Downloading the iso files > is actually the most tedious part of the process, and even if you get a > slow mirror site it can take a very long time. One advantage to going to > the distribution site is that you can choose among various mirrors, > whereas if you go to a site like linuxiso.org then they pick one for you, > and if it is slow it's hard to do much about that. Also, sometimes these > network connections seem to break rather easily, which leaves you with an > incomplete download > > Now, there are newer and better methods of downloading things that use > techniques like bittorrent, but I haven't tried those out yet. > > Anyway, I just use my browser (mozilla) to save the iso files. I am sure > that this isn't the recommended way to do things, but so far it has worked > fine. > > ------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- > Now, once you have downloade the iso files, you must check to make sure > that you downloaded the whole thing. Due to the size and slowness of the > downloads, as well as the brittleness of some of the connections, it's > possible that you might not get a complete iso file, and that will make > your installation fail. > > So, the convention is to check your md5sum value. Each distribution will > give a md5sum value for each iso file, and you need to check the files you > downloaded and make sure they correspond to what is expected. An md5 sum > is a 32 bit value that is unique to the file, and based on it's size and > content (I'm not sure of the precise details of this either I'm afraid). > Fortunately, it's easy to check. > > If your downloaded files are called > > linux-cd1.iso > linux-cd2.iso > linux-cd3.iso > > Then you can run > > md5sum linux-cd1.iso > > etc. to see the md5 sum value. Note that many linux distributions seem to > have 3 installation CDs these days. The first CD is usually for standard > stuff, the second for more advanced things (that we commonly use) and then > the 3rd CD is for internationalization support, like for fonts and > documentation. I find that all 3 CDs are typically useful, so I just start > by burning them all. > > ------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- > > OK, so you have downloaded your iso files, finally. (It often takes quite > a while to get them all done). Now you must burn those files onto CDs. One > iso file per CD. > > There are lots of ways to burn cds. There are numerous programs for > Windows (roxio, nero, etc.) and Linux (toast, cdrecord, ...). Since I am > doing this on Linux, I use cdrecord. For whatever reason, I have to be in > supervisor mode to run cdrecord on my system. I'm not sure if this is > standard or not. > > First, I need to find the special "code" that identifies my cd rw drive. > There is a better technical explanation of this, but for the life of me I > can't remember what this is... > > Anyway, you can find out the "code" for your various i/o devices by > running the following. > > cdrecord -scanbus > > This will output a list of your I/O devices, and provide a 3 digit code > that serves as a unique identifier. My CD-RW is identified as 0,0,0, but > that might vary from system to system. > > Then, I run cdrecord as follows > > cdrecord -dev=0,0,0 linux-cd1.iso > > This will write your iso file (filename.iso) to the device known as 0,0,0, > which in this case is my CD-RW drive. > > There are many other options with cdrecord, but I've never really had any > cause to use them so I don't know what they are. :) > > Here's a nice explanation of how to burn CDs on Linux... > > http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/CD-Writing-HOWTO.html > > Now, once you created all your CDs, you are ready to install linux. That's > another topic of course, but in the last year or so most distributions > have become very easy to deal with. > > One tip, once you have downloaded your iso files, if you can afford the > disk space, keep them around. The time to burn the CDs is generally much > less than the time to download (even on a very fast connection such as we > have here at UMD). Also, I would not even consider trying to download an > iso over a phone line connection. > > ------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- > > -- > Ted Pedersen > http://www.d.umn.edu/~tpederse ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/x3XolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nlpatumd/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
