Modified ISOs are unbootable

[Josh Preston]

I can only describe what I did.. And we use Satellite / Spacewalk /
Cobbler... however, I've found that cobbler buildiso creates nice easy
bootable ISOs, however, the templates in /etc/cobbler are not really
used.. So customization is slightly painful.

First, make any necessary adjustments to the following file (location
might be different for you):

/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/cobbler/action_buildiso.py

For us, we needed to make the following changes:

* Customize the menu display and branding
* Add appropriate help options (verbosity for ops team)
* Move system records above profiles (each ISO is intended for a specific
system and scrolling through a long list of profiles sucked)
* Fix the (local) boot option (LOCALBOOT -1 instead of the crap it had)

Afterwards, we had to delete the following:

/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/cobbler/action_buildiso.pyc
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/cobbler/action_buildiso.pyo

We then sync'd and restarted cobbler:

# cobbler sync
# service cobblerd restart

To build an ISO for a specific system..

Create the cobbler system record:

# cobbler system $command \
  --name=$name \
  --profile=$profile \
  --hostname=$shortname \
  --redhat-management-key=$redhat_management_key \
  --kopts="ksdevice=link hostname=$shortname lang=en_US dns=$dns ip=$ip
netmask=$netmask" \
  --ksmeta="hostname=$shortname ip=$ip netmask=$netmask gateway=$gateway
dns=$dns"

Build the ISO


# cobbler buildiso --system $name --iso=$WORK

Hope that helps.

Thanks!

On 7/11/13 11:21 AM, "Charles McAnany (Kickstart)"
<kickstart at charlesmcanany.com> wrote:

>Friends,
>I'm trying to create some menu options for our boot image (for a
>networked KS install), and for some reason I'm not able to make a
>bootable ISO. Here's the minimum I can do to recreate the problem:
>
>:) wget 
>http://mirror.itc.virginia.edu/fedora//releases/18/Fedora/x86_64/os/images
>/boot.iso
>:) mkdir mnt
>:) mkdir copy
>:) mount boot.iso mnt -o loop
>:) cp -avr mnt/* copy
>:) mkisofs -o boot2.iso -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c
>isolinux/isolinux.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -J -R -V "Fedora"
>copy
>:) dd if=boot.iso of=/dev/sdc
>:) dd if=boot2.iso of=/dev/sdd
>
>Okay, so I did absolutely nothing to the image, right? But...
>:) ll -h
>   351M boot2.iso
>   294M boot.iso
>
>And, most importantly, boot2.iso doesn't boot at all - like, the bios
>says "requested boot device unavailable" or something. (Dell Precision
>T3400)
>
>So, uh, if you wanted to edit isolinux/isolinux.cfg to add menu options
>for a network kickstart, how would you do it?
>
>Thanks much,
>Charles.
>
>
>
>More info:
>
>mkisofs options grabbed from
>http://techspotting.org/creating-a-kickstart-cd-dvd-fedora-redhat-centos/
>
>
>:) isoinfo -d -i boot.iso > b1
>:) isoinfo -d -i boot2.iso > b2
>:) diff b1 b2
>   3c3
>   <Volume id: Fedora 18 x86_64
>   ---
>   >Volume id: Fedora
>   14C14
>   <Volume size is: 150207
>   ---
>   >Volume size is: 179536
>   29c29
>   <Bootoff 3567 13671
>   ---
>   >Bootoff 2F 47
>
>If I mount boot2.iso, it is identical to /mnt as far as I can tell.
>(same size, same dates, same permissions...)
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Kickstart-list mailing list
>Kickstart-list at redhat.com
>https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/kickstart-list