Custom RHEL 5.5 CD - not all packages found when installed SSC

[Parvez Shaikh]

Hi all,

I am trying at my wits end on this forum after lot of googling on the issue
on how I can make custom RHEL 5.5 CD. I need some packages to be removed
from my custom RHEL  and some other RPMs to be added being used by my
application (like unixODBC etc) installation. I am new to custom RHEL CD
making, so giving the steps here in case if I missd any.

Here is what I did -
1. Copied all RPMs from RHEL CD to all-rpms directory
2. Copied all RPMs specific to my application to all-rpms directory
3. Copied only those RPMs needed by my application from all-rpms to app-rpms
(I have list of RPMs needed for application).
4. Edited comps-rhel5-server-core.xml and in alphabetic order kept all my
packages in between <packagelist> </packagelist> as all packages as
"mandatory" ex -
 <packagereq type=mandatory>yum</packagereq>
5. Created app-rhel and app-rhel/Server directory
6. Copied all RPMs from app-rpms to app-rhel/Server directory
7. Copied comps-rhel5-server-core.xml to app-rhel/Server directory
8. Copied isolinux, images, README*, EULA/eula* and .discinfo, .treeinfo to
app-rhel
9. After this run createrepo as
createrepo -u "media://$discinfo" -g  comps-rhel5-server-core.xml app-rhel
where discinfo is head -1 .discinfo
10. Ran mkisofs as
mkisofs -r -R -J -T -v -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -V
"My Custom RHEL"  -p "Customized" -A "My Custom RHEL" -b
isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat -x "lost+found" -o
app-iso/custom-rhel5.5.iso app-rhel

All went fine and could also build RHEL ISO.

It has around 394 packages, I could install it also on VirtualBox but when I
boot it, it only has 99 packages. Last Package it installed was
kernel-2.6.18-194.el5.x86_64.
There is also no "rpm" package there, (rpm command not found), I saw this in
/root/install.log.

Any guidance as to how to debug/troubleshoot would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Parvez