WBITT's Cooker! - User contributions [en]

Redirecting Linux console messages to another machine

Kasim — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 11:00:25 GMT

Kasim:

Here I am going to present how to redirect console messages from virtual machine to physical (base) machine. We used, in our lab, one physical machine running Linux OS and created one virtual machine in it.

Requirement:
*One physical machine running Linux OS
*Created one virtual machine (Linux OS)

Here are the steps we followed in our lab to accomplish this assignment.

Before we begin, it is important to know that your Serial Ports (COM1 and COM2) are named as /dev/ttyS0 and /dev/ttyS1 respectively and so on.

Check if Linux detects your serial port or not. One way you could do is to give the following command:

<pre>
#dmesg |grep ttyS
</pre>

You should see something like this:

Example:

<pre>
serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
serial8250: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550
</pre>

The above output shows that your COM1 and COM2 ports are available and Linux recognizes them.

Another way to test is to give the following command:

<pre>
# ls > /dev/ttyS0
</pre>

If the command does not return any error message then your Serial Ports are recognized by your Linux system.
In case, Linux does not detect your Serial Port, then try giving the following command:

<pre>
#setserial /dev/ttyS0 autoconfig auto_irq
</pre>

Well, above we just discussed only basics of how to find serial ports installed in our machine.

Here, the actual work starts. On guest machine, we need to make few changes in the grub file which was created in our lab.

Add the following line to grub.conf file of guest machine. Open the grub.conf file using VI editor and append the following lines to it.

<pre>
serial --unit=0 --speed=115200 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1
terminal --timeout=10 serial console
</pre>

And also in the grub.conf file, append the following parameters right after the kernel value as shown below.

<pre>
#vi /etc/grub.conf
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.9-21 ro root=LABEL=/ console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200
:wq
#
</pre>

Create a copy of the inittab file and add the following line to it.

<pre>
#cp /etc/inittab /etc/inittab.orig
#vi /etc/inittab
co:23:respawn:/sbin/agetty ttyS0 115200 linux
:wq
#init q
</pre>

Well, now we need to reboot our guest machine and check whether it is accessible using the following command.

<pre>
#Virsh console Node1
</pre>

Redirecting Linux console messages to another machine

Kasim — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 10:59:10 GMT

Kasim:

Here I am going to present how to redirect console messages from virtual machine to physical (base) machine. We used, in our lab, one physical machine running Linux OS and created one virtual machine in it.

Requirement:
*One physical machine running Linux OS
*Created one virtual machine (Linux OS)

Here are the steps we followed in our lab to accomplish this assignment.

Before we begin, it is important to know that your Serial Ports (COM1 and COM2) are named as /dev/ttyS0 and /dev/ttyS1 respectively and so on.

Check if Linux detects your serial port or not. One way you could do is to give the following command:

<pre>
#dmesg |grep ttyS
</pre>

You should see something like this:

Example:

<pre>
serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
serial8250: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550
</pre>

The above output shows that your COM1 and COM2 ports are available and Linux recognizes them.

Another way to test is to give the following command:

<pre>
# ls > /dev/ttyS0
</pre>

If the command does not return any error message then your Serial Ports are recognized by your Linux system.
In case, Linux does not detect your Serial Port, then try giving the following command:

<pre>
#setserial /dev/ttyS0 autoconfig auto_irq
</pre>

Well, above we just discussed only basics of how to find serial ports installed in our machine.

Here, the actual work starts. On guest machine, we need to make few changes in the grub file which was created in our lab.

Add the following line to grub.conf file of guest machine. Open the grub.conf file using VI editor and append below lines to it.

<pre>
serial --unit=0 --speed=115200 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1
terminal --timeout=10 serial console
</pre>

And also in the grub.conf file, append the following parameters right after the kernel value as shown below.

<pre>
#vi /etc/grub.conf
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.9-21 ro root=LABEL=/ console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200
:wq
#
</pre>

Create a copy of the inittab file and add the following line to it.

<pre>
#cp /etc/inittab /etc/inittab.orig
#vi /etc/inittab
co:23:respawn:/sbin/agetty ttyS0 115200 linux
:wq
#init q
</pre>

Well, now we need to reboot our guest machine and check whether it is accessible using the following command.

<pre>
#Virsh console Node1
</pre>

Redirecting Linux console messages to another machine

Kasim — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 10:56:22 GMT

Kasim:

Here I am going to present how to redirect console messages from virtual machine to physical (base) machine. We used, in our lab, one physical machine running Linux OS and created one virtual machine in it.

Requirement:
*One physical machine running Linux OS
*Created one virtual machine (Linux OS)

Here are the steps we followed in our lab to accomplish this assignment.

Before we begin, it is important to know that your Serial Ports (COM1 and COM2) are named as /dev/ttyS0 and /dev/ttyS1 respectively and so on.

Check if Linux detects your serial port or not. One way you could do is to give the following command:

<pre>
#dmesg |grep ttyS
</pre>

You should see something like this:

Example:

<pre>
serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
serial8250: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550
</pre>

The above output shows that your COM1 and COM2 ports are available and Linux recognizes them.

Another way to test is to give the following command:

<pre>
# ls > /dev/ttyS0
</pre>

If the command does not return any error message then your Serial Ports are recognized by your Linux system.
In case, Linux does not detect your Serial Port, then try giving the following command:

<pre>
#setserial /dev/ttyS0 autoconfig auto_irq
</pre>

Well, above we just discussed only basics about how to find serial ports installed in our machine.

Here, our actual task starts. Make changes in the grub file of guest machine which was created in our lab.

Add the following line to grub.conf file of guest machine. Open the grub.conf file using VI editor and append below lines to it.

<pre>
serial --unit=0 --speed=115200 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1
terminal --timeout=10 serial console
</pre>

And also in the grub.conf file, append the following parameters right after the kernel value as shown below.

<pre>
#vi /etc/grub.conf
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.9-21 ro root=LABEL=/ console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200
:wq
#
</pre>

Create a copy of the inittab file and add the following line to it.

<pre>
#cp /etc/inittab /etc/inittab.orig
#vi /etc/inittab
co:23:respawn:/sbin/agetty ttyS0 115200 linux
:wq
#init q
</pre>

Well, now we need to reboot our guest machine and check whether it is accessible using the following command.

<pre>
#Virsh console Node1
</pre>

Redirecting Linux console messages to another machine

Kasim — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 10:54:51 GMT

Kasim:

Here I am going to present how to redirect console messages from virtual machine to physical (base) machine. We used, in our lab, one physical machine running Linux OS and created one virtual machine in it.

Requirement:
*One physical machine running Linux OS
*Created one virtual machine (Linux OS)

Here are the steps we followed in our lab to accomplish this assignment.

Before we begin, it is important to know that your Serial Ports (COM1 and COM2) are named as /dev/ttyS0 and /dev/ttyS1 respectively and so on.

Check if Linux detects your serial port or not.

One way you could do is to give the following command:
<pre>
#dmesg |grep ttyS
</pre>

You should see something like this:

Example:

<pre>
serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
serial8250: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550
</pre>

The above output shows that your COM1 and COM2 ports are available and Linux recognizes them.

Another way to test is to give the following command:

<pre>
# ls > /dev/ttyS0
</pre>

If the command does not return any error message then your Serial Ports are recognized by your Linux system.
In case, Linux does not detect your Serial Port, then try giving the following command:

<pre>
#setserial /dev/ttyS0 autoconfig auto_irq
</pre>

Well, above we just discussed only basics about how to find serial ports installed in our machine.

Here, our actual task starts. Make changes in the grub file of guest machine which was created in our lab.

Add the following line to grub.conf file of guest machine. Open the grub.conf file using VI editor and append below lines to it.

<pre>
serial --unit=0 --speed=115200 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1
terminal --timeout=10 serial console
</pre>

And also in the grub.conf file, append the following parameters right after the kernel value as shown below.

<pre>
#vi /etc/grub.conf
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.9-21 ro root=LABEL=/ console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200
:wq
#
</pre>

Create a copy of the inittab file and add the following line to it.

<pre>
#cp /etc/inittab /etc/inittab.orig
#vi /etc/inittab
co:23:respawn:/sbin/agetty ttyS0 115200 linux
:wq
#init q
</pre>

Well, now we need to reboot our guest machine and check whether it is accessible using the following command.

<pre>
#Virsh console Node1
</pre>

Redirecting Linux console messages to another machine

Kasim — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 10:53:57 GMT

Kasim:

Here I am going to present how to redirect console messages from virtual machine to physical (base) machine. We used, in our lab, one physical machine running Linux OS and created one virtual machine in it.

Requirement:
*One physical machine running Linux OS
*Created one virtual machine (Linux OS)

Here are the steps we used in our lab to accomplish this task.

Before we begin, it is important to know that your Serial Ports (COM1 and COM2) are named as /dev/ttyS0 and /dev/ttyS1 respectively and so on.

Check if Linux detects your serial port or not.

One way you could do is to give the following command:
<pre>
#dmesg |grep ttyS
</pre>

You should see something like this:

Example:

<pre>
serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
serial8250: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550
</pre>

The above output shows that your COM1 and COM2 ports are available and Linux recognizes them.

Another way to test is to give the following command:

<pre>
# ls > /dev/ttyS0
</pre>

If the command does not return any error message then your Serial Ports are recognized by your Linux system.
In case, Linux does not detect your Serial Port, then try giving the following command:

<pre>
#setserial /dev/ttyS0 autoconfig auto_irq
</pre>

Well, above we just discussed only basics about how to find serial ports installed in our machine.

Here, our actual task starts. Make changes in the grub file of guest machine which was created in our lab.

Add the following line to grub.conf file of guest machine. Open the grub.conf file using VI editor and append below lines to it.

<pre>
serial --unit=0 --speed=115200 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1
terminal --timeout=10 serial console
</pre>

And also in the grub.conf file, append the following parameters right after the kernel value as shown below.

<pre>
#vi /etc/grub.conf
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.9-21 ro root=LABEL=/ console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200
:wq
#
</pre>

Create a copy of the inittab file and add the following line to it.

<pre>
#cp /etc/inittab /etc/inittab.orig
#vi /etc/inittab
co:23:respawn:/sbin/agetty ttyS0 115200 linux
:wq
#init q
</pre>

Well, now we need to reboot our guest machine and check whether it is accessible using the following command.

<pre>
#Virsh console Node1
</pre>

Redirecting Linux console messages to another machine

Kasim — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 10:53:32 GMT

Kasim:

Here I am going to present how to redirect console messages from virtual machine to physical (base) machine. We used, in our lab, one physical machine running Linux OS and created one virtual machine in it.

Requirement:
*One physical machine running Linux OS
*Created one virtual machine (Linux OS)

Here are the steps we used in our lab to accomplish this task.

Before we begin, it is important to know that your Serial Ports (COM1 and COM2) are named as /dev/ttyS0 and /dev/ttyS1 respectively and so on.

Check if Linux detects your serial port or not.

One way you could do is to give the following command:
<pre>
#dmesg |grep ttyS
</pre>

You should see something like this:

Example:

<pre>
serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
serial8250: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550
</pre>

The above output shows that your COM1 and COM2 ports are available and Linux recognizes them.

Another way to test is to give the following command:

<pre>
# ls > /dev/ttyS0
</pre>

If the command does not return any error message then your Serial Ports are recognized by your Linux system.
In case, Linux does not detect your Serial Port, then try giving the following command:

<pre>
#setserial /dev/ttyS0 autoconfig auto_irq
</pre>

Well, above we just discussed only basics about how to find serial ports installed in our machine.

Here, our actual task starts. Make changes in the grub file of guest machine which was created in our lab.

Add the following line to grub.conf file of guest machine. Open the grub.conf file using VI editor and append below lines to it.

<pre>
serial --unit=0 --speed=115200 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1
terminal --timeout=10 serial console
</pre>

And also in the grub.conf file, append the following parameters right after the kernel value as shown below.

<pre>
#vi /etc/grub.conf
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.9-21 ro root=LABLE=/ console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200
:wq
#
</pre>

Create a copy of the inittab file and add the following line to it.

<pre>
#cp /etc/inittab /etc/inittab.orig
#vi /etc/inittab
co:23:respawn:/sbin/agetty ttyS0 115200 linux
:wq
#init q
</pre>

Well, now we need to reboot our guest machine and check whether it is accessible using the following command.

<pre>
#Virsh console Node1
</pre>

Redirecting Linux console messages to another machine

Kasim — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 10:52:47 GMT

Kasim:

Here I am going to present how to redirect console messages from virtual machine to physical (base) machine. We used, in our lab, one physical machine running Linux OS and created one virtual machine in it.

Requirement:
*One physical machine running Linux OS
*Created one virtual machine (Linux OS)

Here are the steps we used in our lab to accomplish this task.

Before we begin, it is important to know that your Serial Ports (COM1 and COM2) are named as /dev/ttyS0 and /dev/ttyS1 respectively and so on.

Check if Linux detects your serial port or not.

One way you could do is to give the following command:
<pre>
#dmesg |grep ttyS
</pre>

You should see something like this:

Example:

<pre>
serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
serial8250: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550
</pre>

The above output shows that your COM1 and COM2 ports are available and Linux recognizes them.

Another way to test is to give the following command:

<pre>
# ls > /dev/ttyS0
</pre>

If the command does not return any error message then your Serial Ports are recognized by your Linux system.
In case, Linux does not detect your Serial Port, then try giving the following command:

<pre>
#setserial /dev/ttyS0 autoconfig auto_irq
</pre>

Well, above we just discussed only basics about how to find serial ports installed in our machine.

Here, our actual task starts. Make changes in the grub file of guest machine which was created in our lab.

Add the following line to grub.conf file of guest machine. Open the grub.conf file using VI editor and append below lines to it.

<pre>
serial --unit=0 --speed=115200 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1
terminal --timeout=10 serial console
</pre>

And also in the grub.conf file, append the following parameters right after the kernel value as shown below.

<pre>
#vi /etc/grub.conf
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.9-21 ro root=/dev/hda6 console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200
:wq
#
</pre>

Create a copy of the inittab file and add the following line to it.

<pre>
#cp /etc/inittab /etc/inittab.orig
#vi /etc/inittab
co:23:respawn:/sbin/agetty ttyS0 115200 linux
:wq
#init q
</pre>

Well, now we need to reboot our guest machine and check whether it is accessible using the following command.

<pre>
#Virsh console Node1
</pre>

Redirecting Linux console messages to another machine

Kasim — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 10:51:47 GMT

Kasim:

Here I am going to present how to redirect console messages from virtual machine to physical (base) machine. We used, in our lab, one physical machine running Linux OS and created one virtual machine in it.

Requirement:
*One physical machine running Linux OS
*Created one virtual machine (Linux OS)

Here are the steps used in our lab to accomplish this task.

Before we begin, it is important to know that your Serial Ports (COM1 and COM2) are named as /dev/ttyS0 and /dev/ttyS1 respectively and so on.

Check if Linux detects your serial port or not.

One way you could do is to give the following command:
<pre>
#dmesg |grep ttyS
</pre>

You should see something like this:

Example:

<pre>
serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
serial8250: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550
</pre>

The above output shows that your COM1 and COM2 ports are available and Linux recognizes them.

Another way to test is to give the following command:

<pre>
# ls > /dev/ttyS0
</pre>

If the command does not return any error message then your Serial Ports are recognized by your Linux system.
In case, Linux does not detect your Serial Port, then try giving the following command:

<pre>
#setserial /dev/ttyS0 autoconfig auto_irq
</pre>

Well, above we just discussed only basics about how to find serial ports installed in our machine.

Here, our actual task starts. Make changes in the grub file of guest machine which was created in our lab.

Add the following line to grub.conf file of guest machine. Open the grub.conf file using VI editor and append below lines to it.

<pre>
serial --unit=0 --speed=115200 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1
terminal --timeout=10 serial console
</pre>

And also in the grub.conf file, append the following parameters right after the kernel value as shown below.

<pre>
#vi /etc/grub.conf
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.9-21 ro root=/dev/hda6 console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200
:wq
#
</pre>

Create a copy of the inittab file and add the following line to it.

<pre>
#cp /etc/inittab /etc/inittab.orig
#vi /etc/inittab
co:23:respawn:/sbin/agetty ttyS0 115200 linux
:wq
#init q
</pre>

Well, now we need to reboot our guest machine and check whether it is accessible using the following command.

<pre>
#Virsh console Node1
</pre>

Redirecting Linux console messages to another machine

Kasim — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 10:49:45 GMT

Kasim:

Here I am going to present how to redirect console messages from virtual machine to physical (base) machine. We used, in our lab, one physical machine running Linux OS and created one virtual machine in it.

Requirement:
*One physical machine running Linux OS
*Created one virtual machine (Linux OS)

Perform the following mentioned steps on your guest machine.

Before we begin, it is important to know that your Serial Ports (COM1 and COM2) are named as /dev/ttyS0 and /dev/ttyS1 respectively and so on.

Check if Linux detects your serial port or not.

One way you could do is to give the following command:
<pre>
#dmesg |grep ttyS
</pre>

You should see something like this:

Example:

<pre>
serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
serial8250: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550
</pre>

The above output shows that your COM1 and COM2 ports are available and Linux recognizes them.

Another way to test is to give the following command:

<pre>
# ls > /dev/ttyS0
</pre>

If the command does not return any error message then your Serial Ports are recognized by your Linux system.
In case, Linux does not detect your Serial Port, then try giving the following command:

<pre>
#setserial /dev/ttyS0 autoconfig auto_irq
</pre>

Well, above we just discussed only basics about how to find serial ports installed in our machine.

Here, our actual task starts. Make changes in the grub file of guest machine which was created in our lab.

Add the following line to grub.conf file of guest machine. Open the grub.conf file using VI editor and append below lines to it.

<pre>
serial --unit=0 --speed=115200 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1
terminal --timeout=10 serial console
</pre>

And also in the grub.conf file, append the following parameters right after the kernel value as shown below.

<pre>
#vi /etc/grub.conf
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.9-21 ro root=/dev/hda6 console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200
:wq
#
</pre>

Create a copy of the inittab file and add the following line to it.

<pre>
#cp /etc/inittab /etc/inittab.orig
#vi /etc/inittab
co:23:respawn:/sbin/agetty ttyS0 115200 linux
:wq
#init q
</pre>

Well, now we need to reboot our guest machine and check whether it is accessible using the following command.

<pre>
#Virsh console Node1
</pre>

Redirecting Linux console messages to another machine

Kasim — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 10:49:00 GMT

Kasim:

Here I am going to present how to redirect console messages from virtual machine to physical (base) machine. We used, in our lab, one physical machine running Linux OS and created one virtual machine in it.

Requirement:
*One physical machine running Linux OS
*Created one virtual machine (Linux OS)

Perform the following mentioned steps on your guest machine.

Before we begin, it is important to know that your Serial Ports (COM1 and COM2) are named as /dev/ttyS0 and /dev/ttyS1 respectively and so on.

Check if Linux detects your serial port or not.

One way you could do is to give the following command:
<pre>
#dmesg |grep ttyS
</pre>

You should see something like this:

Example:

<pre>
serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
serial8250: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550
</pre>

The above output shows that your COM1 and COM2 ports are available and Linux recognizes them.

Another way to test is to give the following command:

<pre>
# ls > /dev/ttyS0
</pre>

If the command does not return any error message then your Serial Ports are recognized by your Linux system.
In case, Linux does not detect your Serial Port, then try giving the following command:

<pre>
#setserial /dev/ttyS0 autoconfig auto_irq
</pre>

Well, above we just discussed only basics about how to find serial ports installed in our machine.

Here, our actual task starts. Make changes in the grub file of guest machine which was created in our lab.

Add the following line to grub.conf file of guest machine. Open the grub.conf file using VI editor and append below lines to it.

<pre>
serial --unit=0 --speed=115200 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1
terminal --timeout=10 serial console
</pre>

And also in the grub.conf file, append the following parameters right after kernel value.

<pre>
#vi /etc/grub.conf
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.9-21 ro root=/dev/hda6 console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200
:wq
#
</pre>

Create a copy of the inittab file and add the following line to it.

<pre>
#cp /etc/inittab /etc/inittab.orig
#vi /etc/inittab
co:23:respawn:/sbin/agetty ttyS0 115200 linux
:wq
#init q
</pre>

Well, now we need to reboot our guest machine and check whether it is accessible using the following command.

<pre>
#Virsh console Node1
</pre>

Redirecting Linux console messages to another machine

Kasim — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 10:48:33 GMT

Kasim:

Here I am going to present how to redirect console messages from virtual machine to physical (base) machine. We used, in our lab, one physical machine running Linux OS and created one virtual machine in it.

Requirement:
*One physical machine running Linux OS
*Created one virtual machine (Linux OS)

Perform the following mentioned steps on your guest machine.

Before we begin, it is important to know that your Serial Ports (COM1 and COM2) are named as /dev/ttyS0 and /dev/ttyS1 respectively and so on.

Check if Linux detects your serial port or not.

One way you could do is to give the following command:
<pre>
#dmesg |grep ttyS
</pre>

You should see something like this:

Example:

<pre>
serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
serial8250: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550
</pre>

The above output shows that your COM1 and COM2 ports are available and Linux recognizes them.

Another way to test is to give the following command:

<pre>
# ls > /dev/ttyS0
</pre>

If the command does not return any error message then your Serial Ports are recognized by your Linux system.
In case, Linux does not detect your Serial Port, then try giving the following command:

<pre>
#setserial /dev/ttyS0 autoconfig auto_irq
</pre>

Well, above we just discussed only basics about how to find serial ports installed in our machine.

Here, our actual task starts. Make changes in the grub file of guest machine which was created in our lab.

Add the following line to grub.conf file of guest machine. Open the grub.conf file using VI editor and append below lines to it.

<pre>
serial --unit=0 --speed=115200 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1
terminal --timeout=10 serial console
</pre>

And also in the grub.conf file, append the following parameters right after kernel value.

<pre>
#vi /etc/grub.conf
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.9-21 ro root=/dev/hda6 console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200
:wq
</pre>

Create a copy of the inittab file and add the following line to it.

<pre>
#cp /etc/inittab /etc/inittab.orig
#vi /etc/inittab
co:23:respawn:/sbin/agetty ttyS0 115200 linux
:wq
#init q
</pre>

Well, now we need to reboot our guest machine and check whether it is accessible using the following command.

<pre>
#Virsh console Node1
</pre>

Redirecting Linux console messages to another machine

Kasim — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 10:42:14 GMT

Kasim:

Here I am going to present how to redirect console messages from virtual machine to physical (base) machine. We used, in our lab, one physical machine running Linux OS and created one virtual machine in it.

Requirement:
*One physical machine running Linux OS
*Created one virtual machine (Linux OS)

Perform the following mentioned steps on your guest machine.

Before we begin, it is important to know that your Serial Ports (COM1 and COM2) are named as /dev/ttyS0 and /dev/ttyS1 respectively and so on.

Check if Linux detects your serial port or not.

One way you could do is to give the following command:
<pre>
#dmesg |grep ttyS
</pre>

You should see something like this:

Example:

<pre>
serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
serial8250: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550
</pre>

The above output shows that your COM1 and COM2 ports are available and Linux recognizes them.

Another way to test is to give the following command:

<pre>
# ls > /dev/ttyS0
</pre>

If the command does not return any error message then your Serial Ports are recognized by your Linux system.
In case, Linux does not detect your Serial Port, then try giving the following command:

<pre>
#setserial /dev/ttyS0 autoconfig auto_irq
</pre>

Well, above we just discussed only basics about how to find serial ports installed in our machine.

Here, our actual task starts. Make changes in the grub file of guest machine which was created in our lab.

Add the following line to grub.conf file of guest machine. Open grub.conf file using VI editor and append below lines to it.

<pre>
serial --unit=0 --speed=115200 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1
terminal --timeout=10 serial console
</pre>

Create a copy of the inittab file and add the following line to it.

<pre>
#cp /etc/inittab /etc/inittab.orig
#vi /etc/inittab
co:23:respawn:/sbin/agetty ttyS0 115200 linux
:wq
#init q
</pre>

Well, now we need to reboot our guest machine and check whether it is accessible using the following command.

<pre>
#Virsh console Node1
</pre>

Redirecting Linux console messages to another machine

Kasim — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 10:40:56 GMT

Kasim:

Here I am going to present how to redirect console messages from virtual machine to physical (base) machine. We used, in our lab, one physical machine running Linux OS and created one virtual machine in it.

Requirement:
*One physical machine running Linux OS
*Created one virtual machine (Linux OS)

Perform the following mentioned steps on your guest machine.

Before we begin, it is important to know that your Serial Ports (COM1 and COM2) are named as /dev/ttyS0 and /dev/ttyS1 respectively and so on.

Check if Linux detects your serial port or not.

One way you could do is to give the following command:
<pre>
#dmesg |grep ttyS
</pre>

You should see something like this:

Example:

<pre>
serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
serial8250: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550
</pre>

The above output shows that your COM1 and COM2 ports are available and Linux recognizes them.

Another way to test is to give the following command:

<pre>
# ls > /dev/ttyS0
</pre>

If the command does not return any error message then your Serial Ports are recognized by your Linux system.
In case, Linux does not detect your Serial Port, then try giving the following command:

<pre>
#setserial /dev/ttyS0 autoconfig auto_irq
</pre>

Well, above we just discussed only basics about how to find serial ports installed in our machine.

Here, our actual task starts. Make changes in the grub file of guest machine which was created in our lab.

Add the following line to grub.conf file of guest machine. Open grub.conf file using VI editor and append below lines to it.

<pre>
serial --unit=0 --speed=115200 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1
terminal --timeout=10 serial console
</pre>

Create a copy of the inittab file and add the following line to it.

<pre>
#cp /etc/inittab /etc/inittab.orig
#vi /etc/inittab
co:23:respawn:/sbin/agetty ttyS0 115200 linux
:wq
#init q
</pre>

Well, now we need to reboot our guest machine and check whether it is accessible using the follwoing command.

<pre>
#Virsh console Node1
</pre>

Redirecting Linux console messages to another machine

Kasim — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 10:39:29 GMT

Kasim: Created page with ' Here I am going to present how to redirect console messages from machine to another machine. We used, in our lab, one physical machine running Linux OS and created one virtual m…'

Here I am going to present how to redirect console messages from machine to another machine. We used, in our lab, one physical machine running Linux OS and created one virtual machine in it.

Requirement:
*One physical machine running Linux OS
*Created one virtual machine (Linux OS)

Perform the following mentioned steps on your guest machine.

Before we begin, it is important to know that your Serial Ports (COM1 and COM2) are named as /dev/ttyS0 and /dev/ttyS1 respectively and so on.

Check if Linux detects your serial port or not.

One way you could do is to give the following command:
<pre>
#dmesg |grep ttyS
</pre>

You should see something like this:

Example:

<pre>
serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
serial8250: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550
</pre>

The above output shows that your COM1 and COM2 ports are available and Linux recognizes them.

Another way to test is to give the following command:

<pre>
# ls > /dev/ttyS0
</pre>

If the command does not return any error message then your Serial Ports are recognized by your Linux system.
In case, Linux does not detect your Serial Port, then try giving the following command:

<pre>
#setserial /dev/ttyS0 autoconfig auto_irq
</pre>

Well, above we just discussed only basics about how to find serial ports installed in our machine.

Here, our actual task starts. Make changes in the grub file of guest machine which was created in our lab.

Add the following line to grub.conf file of guest machine. Open grub.conf file using VI editor and append below lines to it.

<pre>
serial --unit=0 --speed=115200 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1
terminal --timeout=10 serial console
</pre>

Create a copy of the inittab file and add the following line to it.

<pre>
#cp /etc/inittab /etc/inittab.orig
#vi /etc/inittab
co:23:respawn:/sbin/agetty ttyS0 115200 linux
:wq
#init q
</pre>

Well, now we need to reboot our guest machine and check whether it is accessible using the follwoing command.

<pre>
#Virsh console Node1
</pre>

CentOS 5.5 x86 64 Hypervisor Edition (Minimal)

Kasim — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 11:29:10 GMT

Kasim:

Author: Muhammad Kamran Azeem (kamran _at_ wbitt _dot_ com)

Created: 04 Jan 2011

Last Revised: 04 Jan 2011

It started, when I developed an itch to have a CENTOS 5.5 ServerCD, so I could setup my Physical and Vitual Machines, quickly. However CENTOS website does not provide one. It provides a live CD, which was of no use to me. And I was not in a mood (nor could afford) to download full 4.x GB of DVD. This desire to have a CENTOS ServerCD, changed to create a (minimalistic) Hypervisor CD, when I noticed RedHat's virtualization solution, RHEV, or, RedHat Enterprise Virtualization. RHEV is a slim/cut down version of RHEL 6, working as a KVM Hypervisor, with a very small install foot-print. I noticed that it is a similar concept as Citrix XEN Server. If I can make such a CD / custom-distribution, I can use it to install the bare-minimum set of hypervisor packages (XEN or KVM) on my physical machines. Then, I can use the same CD to install a minimalistic (core) installation of a guest OS on the VMs I would create.

So, you can say, I was in competition with RedHat! :) I succeeded in my minimalistic Hypervisor approach (< 500MB), even if I got exceeded by a few (hundred) megabytes, compared to RedHat. Below is how I did it.

Note: You can refer to my other article [[Tiny CentOS 5.5 32 bit (i386)]], for more details and detailed steps. However, in this article, I have further simplified the steps. You no longer need to copy one RPM at a time to a temporary directory and test install it. Using "yumdownloader" is the easiest method. And the most important is that you no longer have to have a local repository of the full DVD. With the method below, you can pull everything directly from the internet. i.e. from the CENTOS websote (centos.org).

==Benefits - Why a Hypervisor CD (Server CD) in the first place?==
Well, the key benefits are:
* centos.org does not provide a server CD for centos 5.5. That is a good enough reason to create one ourselves, in the first place.
* Small ISO size, makes it easier and ideal to download, even in bandwidth/volume limited environments.
* Less packages means, less vulnerabilities (if you decide to use it in production). Less holes to exploit.
* Less packages to update, when any updates are released from upstream vendor. This results in faster update of the system. And low bandwidth consumption. In case you have a farm of such "thin" servers, lesser bandwidth/volume would be needed to update all of the servers in your farm, compared to fat/thick installations.
* Delivers you SSH and YUM, so you can add anything you want, on top of it.
* Creates a very small (534 MB ~ 7504MB) foot print on the disk (depending on your package selection). The Virtual machines, can now be assigned virtual disks, as low as 1.5 GB in size (tested) , or 1.0 GB in size (not tested yet).
* Based on point above, multiple small VMs can be created in a disk constrained physical machine. 10 Virtual Machines would roughly consume about 15 GB of space.
* Once it is installed on a VM and rebooted, you can change the memory assignment to the VM, lowering it to 64 MB. And it will still work! (tested).
* Ideal for clusters of any size.

===What does this CD provide===
Although the actual CD is created in the steps listed farther below, still it would be appropriate to list it's key software packages.
* YUM, wget, FTP client
* VI editor (vim-minimal)
* DHCP client
* SSH Server and SSH client
* SELinux
* IP Tables
* nmap, tcpdump, wireshark, iptraf, traceroute, etc.
* XEN Hypervisor
* KVM Hypervisor
* virt-viewer, virt-manager
* VNC Server
* Basic X Window System with TWM (Tom's Window Manager) and XTERM

==Infrastructure==
===Physical Host===
The physical host is a Fedora 14 machine, with 4 GB RAM, and 200 GB of disk. Out of which about 70 GB is free space.

The disk has a directory /data/cdimages , which hosts various ISO images of different OS, I have. This directory has the following layout (only the part interesting to us is shown below).

<pre>
[root@fedora14 cdimages]# tree -d
.
├── CentOS-5.5-x86_64
│ ├── CentOS
│ ├── images
│ │ ├── pxeboot
│ │ └── xen
│ ├── isolinux
│ ├── NOTES
│ └── repodata
└── CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor
</pre>

The /data/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64 is the full DVD copied in this directory. If you cannot afford to download full DVD, (for perfectly understandable reasons), you can download the packages, directly from the CENTOS website. The method to do so, is already mentioned here: http://cooker.wbitt.com/index.php/CENTOS_Server_CD_project#Creating_the_.22core.22_install-tree_from_a_http_site

The /data/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor directory shown above, is an empty directory. It is possible that you don't have this directory created at this moment. We can create this directory at a later stage.

The directory /data/cdimages on the physical host, is made available as an NFS writeable share to the 192.168.122.0/24 network. As following:

<pre>
[root@fedora14 cdimages]# cat /etc/exports
/data/cdimages 192.168.122.0/255.255.255.0(rw,no_root_squash)
[root@fedora14 cdimages]#

[root@fedora14 cdimages]# service nfs restart
</pre>
(Make sure that the firewall is not blocking incoming NFS requests on the physical host).

This is a good method to save space, both on the physical host and on the VMs. That means, you don't have to "fill-up" your build host (VM) will all the DVD/RPM files and ISO images. So they don't need large virtual disks for it. All of the work, can be performed, when we mount this directory /data/cdimages, from the physical host, to the buildhost-64 VM.

The physical host has the IP: 192.168.122.1 , on the virbr0 interface. It may (or may not) have any IP on it's eth0 interface, which is irrelevant to this text.

===Build Host===
The buildhost (named buildhost-64) is actually a CentOS 5.5 64 bit (x86_64) Virtual Machine, running inside a Fedora 14 physical host. It is installed with the minimal installation available with default CENTOS installer. It has additional packages installed on it, which are:
<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 ~]# yum -y install anaconda anaconda-runtime mkisofs cdrecord
</pre>
The BuildHost has only 512 MB Virtual Memory, and 4GB Virtual Disk. We basically do not need much disk space on the build host. The space is needed to pull the RPMs using "yumdownloader" command. The BuildHost (VM) has the IP: 192.168.122.229, on its eth0 interface.

==Steps==
===Make the repositories available on the buildhost-64===
See if you are able to view the NFS share made available on the physical host.
<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 ~]# showmount -e 192.168.122.1
Export list for 192.168.122.1:
/data/cdimages 192.168.122.0/255.255.255.0
</pre>

Create a mount point on the build host, and mount the NFS share on it.

<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 ~]# mkdir /mnt/cdimages

[root@buildhost-64 ~]# mount -t nfs 192.168.122.1:/data/cdimages/ /mnt/cdimages/

[root@buildhost-64 ~]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/vda1 3.8G 913M 2.8G 34% /
tmpfs 252M 0 252M 0% /dev/shm
192.168.122.1:/data/cdimages/
191G 113G 69G 63% /mnt/cdimages
[root@buildhost-64 ~]#
</pre>

As you can see, the /data/cdimages from the physical host is now available on our buildhost-64, as /mnt/cdimages.

Create an empty directory CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor inside /mnt/cdimages, if not already done so. It must be empty though. This directory is going to hold our new custom distribution.

<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 ~]# mkdir /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor
</pre>

Copy the DVD structure, (excluding the CentOS directory), from /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64/ to this newly created directory /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/.
<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 ~]# rsync -av --exclude CentOS/ \
/mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64/ /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/
</pre>

Without the CentOS directory, which holds all the RPMs of the distribution, the structure (with some necessary files), is about 226 MB in total.
<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 ~]# du -sh /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/
226M /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/
</pre>

I created temporary directories named /tmp/transitRPMs and /tmp/RPMtest. /tmp/transitRPMs will hold the RPMs pulled by yumdownloader. /tmp/RPMtest will be used to test the RPMs. This is optional, because it doesn't make much sense after the packages are downloaded using yumdownloader, which checks for dependencies itself.
Note: We cannot use directories created inside NFS mounts to use with RPM, or YUM, or YUMDOWNLOADER. Thus it is important to have a directory created on the local filesystem for both pulling the RPMs and testing them.
<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]# mkdir /tmp/transitRPMs

[root@buildhost-64 tmp]# mkdir /tmp/RPMtest
</pre>

===Pulling the necessary RPMs===
Note: The transitRPMs (or whatever name you chose for it), must not be on an NFS share. I found problems getting RPM and YUM to work inside NFS mounts.

<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]# yum -y install yum-utils
</pre>

Simple way to pull the the required RPM, along it's dependencies, is to use YUMDOWNLOADER (part of yum-utils package). The other (manual) method is to of-course copy the files one at a time, to the /tmp/transitRPMs directory. (Not very appealing of-course).

Here is how to pull just the kernel and all of it's related dependencies.
<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]# yumdownloader --destdir=/tmp/transitRPMs/ --installroot=/tmp/transitRPMs/ --resolve kernel
. . .
. . .
--> Processing Dependency: libk5crypto.so.3()(64bit) for package: openssl
--> Running transaction check
---> Package krb5-libs.x86_64 0:1.6.1-36.el5_4.1 set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: libkeyutils.so.1(KEYUTILS_0.3)(64bit) for package: krb5-libs
--> Processing Dependency: libkeyutils.so.1()(64bit) for package: krb5-libs
--> Running transaction check
---> Package keyutils-libs.x86_64 0:1.2-1.el5 set to be updated
--> Finished Dependency Resolution
. . .
. . .
kernel-2.6.18-194.el5.x86_64.rpm | 19 MB 00:00
device-mapper-multipath-0.4.7-34.el5.x86_64.rpm | 3.0 MB 00:00
libsysfs-2.0.0-6.x86_64.rpm | 45 kB 00:00
iputils-20020927-46.el5.x86_64.rpm | 131 kB 00:00
libstdc++-4.1.2-48.el5.x86_64.rpm | 352 kB 00:00
libacl-2.2.39-6.el5.x86_64.rpm | 19 kB 00:00
libcap-1.10-26.x86_64.rpm | 23 kB 00:00
cpio-2.6-23.el5_4.1.x86_64.rpm | 122 kB 00:00
filesystem-2.4.0-3.el5.x86_64.rpm | 1.0 MB 00:00
nash-5.1.19.6-61.x86_64.rpm | 1.1 MB 00:00
binutils-2.17.50.0.6-14.el5.x86_64.rpm | 2.9 MB 00:00
SysVinit-2.86-15.el5.x86_64.rpm | 117 kB 00:00
bash-3.2-24.el5.x86_64.rpm | 1.9 MB 00:00
libselinux-1.33.4-5.5.el5.x86_64.rpm | 77 kB 00:00
db4-4.3.29-10.el5.x86_64.rpm | 898 kB 00:00
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]#
</pre>

<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]# ls /tmp/transitRPMs/*.rpm | wc -l
82

[root@buildhost-64 tmp]# du -sh /tmp/transitRPMs/
104M /tmp/transitRPMs/
</pre>

Of-course, the above is minimal most as it can get. It will give you a login prompt and shell access. But you won't have yum, wget, ftp, etc. And, you have to assign IP as well yourself. However this can be ideal for testing multiple machines, just to test availability over the network. But again, nothing fancy.

To get all the packages we need, for our "HypervisorEdition", below is what all I pulled.

<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 ~]# yumdownloader --destdir=/tmp/transitRPMs/ --installroot=/tmp/transitRPMs/ --resolve kernel \
vim-minimal wget yum dhclient grub rootfiles openssh-clients openssh-server sysklogd passwd star attr\
iptables selinux-policy-targeted setools policycoreutils-newrole kernel-xen telnet tcpdump wireshark nmap \
zip bzip2 rsync which traceroute ftp vixie-cron iptraf vnc-server kudzu \
xen kvm kvm-tools virt-viewer virt-manager xterm \
xorg-x11-xinit xorg-x11-server-Xorg xorg-x11-twm xorg-x11-xdm bitmap-fonts desktop-backgrounds-basic \
xorg-x11-drivers xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi xorg-x11-fonts-100dpi xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-1-75dpi \
xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-1-100dpi xorg-x11-fonts-misc xorg-x11-fonts-truetype xorg-x11-fonts-Type1
</pre>

<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]# ls /tmp/transitRPMs/*.rpm | wc -l
371

[root@buildhost-64 tmp]# du -sh /tmp/transitRPMs/
275M /tmp/transitRPMs/
</pre>

===Test the installation of pulled RPMs (for the sake of completeness)===
I use the testrun.sh script, shown in the scripts section below, to test the installation of RPMs, which were pulled just now using yumdownloader. You have to edit the script to specify correct locations of the RPMTEST variable.
<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]# ./testrun.sh /tmp/transitRPMs/
warning: /tmp/transitRPMs//alsa-lib-1.0.17-1.el5.x86_64.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID e8562897
Preparing... ########################################### [100%]
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]#

No errors here. This means that the test installation of the RPMs was successful. Good.
</pre>

===Synchronize the transitRPMs location with the build-tree===
Once the test is successful, you can rsync this (transitRPMs) directory to your buildtree (/mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor).

Create the CentOS directory in your build directory, if you have not created it already. It should be empty at this point.
<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]# mkdir /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/CentOS
</pre>

Now sync the directory.
<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]# rsync -av --exclude var/ /tmp/transitRPMs/ /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/CentOS/
building file list ... done
. . .
. . .
xorg-x11-xinit-1.0.2-15.el5.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-xkb-utils-1.0.2-2.1.x86_64.rpm
xterm-215-8.el5_4.1.x86_64.rpm
xz-libs-4.999.9-0.3.beta.20091007git.el5.x86_64.rpm
yum-3.2.22-26.el5.centos.noarch.rpm
yum-fastestmirror-1.1.16-14.el5.centos.1.noarch.rpm
yum-metadata-parser-1.1.2-3.el5.centos.x86_64.rpm
zip-2.31-2.el5.x86_64.rpm
zlib-1.2.3-3.x86_64.rpm

sent 284376910 bytes received 8188 bytes 11607555.02 bytes/sec
total size is 284309498 speedup is 1.00
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]#
</pre>

===Edit the comps.xml file as per requirements===
I pulled a copy of original comps.xml from the original CENTOS repository. Removed all the "xml:lang" lines from it. Also removed all un-necessary groups and categories from it. Modified contents of the groups: core, base, xen and kvm. Below is the minimal version of comps.xml, for my CENTOS 5.5 64 bit Hypervisor Edition.

<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]# cat comps.xml-hypervisor
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE newcomps PUBLIC "-//CentOS//DTD Comps info//EN" "comps.dtd">
<comps>

<group>
<id>base</id>
<name>Base</name>
<description>This group includes a minimal set of packages, inclusding X.</description>
<default>false</default>
<uservisible>true</uservisible>
<packagelist>
<packagereq type="default">vim-minimal</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">grub</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">openssh-clients</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">openssh-server</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">dhclient</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">rootfiles</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">iptables</packagereq>
<packagereq type="optional">kernel-xen</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">telnet</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">tcpdump</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">nmap</packagereq>
<packagereq type="optional">wireshark</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">zip</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">bzip2</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">rsync</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">which</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">traceroute</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">ftp</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">vixie-cron</packagereq>
<packagereq type="optional">iptraf</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">setools</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">selinux-policy-targeted</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">selinux-policy</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">passwd</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">star</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">attr</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">policycoreutils-newrole</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">sysklogd</packagereq>
<packagereq type="optional">vnc-server</packagereq>
<packagereq type="optional">xterm</packagereq>
<packagereq type="conditional" requires="xterm">xorg-x11-twm</packagereq>
<packagereq type="conditional" requires="xterm">xorg-x11-xinit</packagereq>
<packagereq type="conditional" requires="xterm">xorg-x11-xfs</packagereq>
<packagereq type="conditional" requires="xterm">xorg-x11-server-utils</packagereq>
<packagereq type="conditional" requires="xterm">xorg-x11-server-Xorg</packagereq>
<packagereq type="conditional" requires="xterm">xorg-x11-xdm</packagereq>
<packagereq type="conditional" requires="xterm">xorg-x11-drivers</packagereq>
<packagereq type="conditional" requires="xterm">bitmap-fonts</packagereq>
<packagereq type="conditional" requires="xterm">desktop-backgrounds-basic</packagereq>
<packagereq type="conditional" requires="xterm">xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi</packagereq>
<packagereq type="conditional" requires="xterm">xorg-x11-fonts-100dpi</packagereq>
<packagereq type="conditional" requires="xterm">xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-1-75dpi</packagereq>
<packagereq type="conditional" requires="xterm">xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-1-100dpi</packagereq>
<packagereq type="conditional" requires="xterm">xorg-x11-fonts-misc</packagereq>
<packagereq type="conditional" requires="xterm">xorg-x11-fonts-truetype</packagereq>
<packagereq type="conditional" requires="xterm">xorg-x11-fonts-Type1</packagereq>
<packagereq type="conditional" requires="xterm">xorg-x11-xauth</packagereq>
</packagelist>
</group>

<group>
<id>core</id>
<name>Core</name>
<description>Smallest possible installation</description>
<default>true</default>
<uservisible>false</uservisible>
<packagelist>
<packagereq type="mandatory">SysVinit</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">basesystem</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">bash</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">centos-release</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">coreutils</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">cpio</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">e2fsprogs</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">redhat-logos</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">centos-release-notes</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">filesystem</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">glibc</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">initscripts</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">iproute</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">iputils</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">libgcc</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">libtermcap</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">mkinitrd</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">procps</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">readline</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">rpm</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">setup</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">shadow-utils</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">sysklogd</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">termcap</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">util-linux</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">yum</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">wget</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">kudzu</packagereq>
</packagelist>
</group>

<group>
<id>xen</id>
<name>Virtualization</name>
<description>Virtualization Support with XEN</description>
<default>false</default>
<uservisible>true</uservisible>
<packagelist>
<packagereq type="default">kernel-xen</packagereq>
<packagereq type="optional">libvirt</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">xen</packagereq>
<packagereq type="optional">virt-manager</packagereq>
<packagereq type="optional">virt-viewer</packagereq>
</packagelist>
</group>

<group>
<id>kvm</id>
<name>KVM</name>
<description>Virtualization Support with KVM</description>
<default>false</default>
<uservisible>true</uservisible>
<packagelist>
<packagereq type='default'>celt051</packagereq>
<packagereq type='default'>etherboot-zroms</packagereq>
<packagereq type='default'>etherboot-zroms-kvm</packagereq>
<packagereq type='default'>kmod-kvm</packagereq>
<packagereq type='default'>kvm</packagereq>
<packagereq type='default'>kvm-qemu-img</packagereq>
<packagereq type='default'>log4cpp</packagereq>
<packagereq type='default'>qcairo</packagereq>
<packagereq type='default'>qffmpeg-libs</packagereq>
<packagereq type='default'>qpixman</packagereq>
<packagereq type='default'>qspice-libs</packagereq>
<packagereq type='default'>libvirt</packagereq>
<packagereq type='optional'>etherboot-pxes</packagereq>
<packagereq type='optional'>etherboot-roms</packagereq>
<packagereq type='optional'>etherboot-roms-kvm</packagereq>
<packagereq type='optional'>iasl</packagereq>
<packagereq type='optional'>kvm-tools</packagereq>
<packagereq type="optional">virt-manager</packagereq>
<packagereq type="optional">virt-viewer</packagereq>
</packagelist>
</group>

<category>
<id>virtualization</id>
<name>Virtualization</name>
<description>Virtualization Support.</description>
<display_order>93</display_order>
<grouplist>
<groupid>xen</groupid>
<groupid>kvm</groupid>
</grouplist>
</category>

</comps>
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]#
</pre>

You may want to run a sanity check on your comps.xml file. It will reveal any errors/typing mistakes, etc.
<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]# xmllint --valid comps.xml-hypervisor
</pre>

===Create the Repository===
Use the script shown below in the scripts section to create the repository in your build directory. You have to edit the script to specify correct values for the variables used for COMPS.XML file.
<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]# ./createrepo.sh /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor
Doing: rm -f /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/repodata/*
Doing: cp -v /tmp/comps.xml-hypervisor /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/repodata/comps.xml
`/tmp/comps.xml-hypervisor' -> `/mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/repodata/comps.xml'
Doing: createrepo -u media://1272326751.405938 -g /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/repodata/comps.xml /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/
371/371 - CentOS/libgnomeui-2.16.0-5.el5.x86_64.rpm
Saving Primary metadata
Saving file lists metadata
Saving other metadata
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]#
</pre>

===Build the ISO file out of your build-tree===
Time for the final step. Build the ISO. Use the buildiso.sh script shown in the scripts section below, to create the ISO. You have to edit the script to specify location and name of the ISO file.
<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]# ./buildiso.sh /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor
INFO: UTF-8 character encoding detected by locale settings.
Assuming UTF-8 encoded filenames on source filesystem,
use -input-charset to override.
mkisofs 2.01 (cpu-pc-linux-gnu)
Scanning /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor
Scanning /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/images
Scanning /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/images/pxeboot
Excluded: /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/images/pxeboot/TRANS.TBL
Scanning /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/images/xen
Excluded: /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/images/xen/TRANS.TBL
Excluded: /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/images/TRANS.TBL
Scanning /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/repodata
Excluded: /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/TRANS.TBL
Scanning /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/CentOS
Scanning /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/isolinux
Excluded: /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/isolinux/TRANS.TBL
Excluded by match: /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/isolinux/boot.cat
Using RPM_G000.;1 for /RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-5 (RPM-GPG-KEY-beta)
Using RELEA000.;1 for /RELEASE-NOTES-en (RELEASE-NOTES-en_US)
Using RELEA000.HTM;1 for /RELEASE-NOTES-es.html (RELEASE-NOTES-en.html)
Using RELEA001.HTM;1 for /RELEASE-NOTES-en.html (RELEASE-NOTES-en_US.html)
. . .
. . .
Using XORG_01V.RPM;1 for /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/CentOS/xorg-x11-drv-digitaledge-1.1.0-1.1.x86_64.rpm (xorg-x11-drv-s3virge-1.9.1-2.1.x86_64.rpm)
Using XORG_01W.RPM;1 for /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/CentOS/xorg-x11-drv-s3virge-1.9.1-2.1.x86_64.rpm (xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi-7.1-2.1.el5.noarch.rpm)
Writing: Initial Padblock Start Block 0
Done with: Initial Padblock Block(s) 16
Writing: Primary Volume Descriptor Start Block 16
Done with: Primary Volume Descriptor Block(s) 1
. . .
. . .
Writing: Extension record Start Block 92
Done with: Extension record Block(s) 1
Writing: The File(s) Start Block 93
2.07% done, estimate finish Tue Jan 4 11:47:07 2011
4.13% done, estimate finish Tue Jan 4 11:47:07 2011
6.20% done, estimate finish Tue Jan 4 11:47:07 2011
8.26% done, estimate finish Tue Jan 4 11:47:19 2011
10.32% done, estimate finish Tue Jan 4 11:47:16 2011
. . .
. . .
94.97% done, estimate finish Tue Jan 4 11:47:47 2011
97.04% done, estimate finish Tue Jan 4 11:47:47 2011
99.11% done, estimate finish Tue Jan 4 11:47:46 2011
Total translation table size: 103926
Total rockridge attributes bytes: 44898
Total directory bytes: 71680
Path table size(bytes): 98
Done with: The File(s) Block(s) 241935
Writing: Ending Padblock Start Block 242028
Done with: Ending Padblock Block(s) 150
Max brk space used 84000
242178 extents written (473 MB)
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]#
</pre>

Thats all. The ISO file is ready. Burn it on a CD, or use directly, or whatever suits you.

End of steps. The task of building the custom CENTOS ISO is successfully completed at this point.

==Scripts used to test RPMs, create repo, and build ISO==
===testrun.sh (Used for testing a directory full of RPMs)===
<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]# cat testrun.sh
#!/bin/bash
TESTDIR=$1
if [ "$TESTDIR" == "" ] ; then
echo "You should provide the name of test directory containing RPMS. Please specify full path."
exit 1
fi
RPMTEST="/tmp/RPMtest"
rpm --initdb --dbpath ${RPMTEST}
rpm --test --dbpath ${RPMTEST} --root ${RPMTEST} -ivh ${TESTDIR}/*.rpm
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]#
</pre>

Usage:
<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]# ./testrun.sh /tmp/transitRPMs
warning: /tmp/transitRPMs/alsa-lib-1.0.17-1.el5.x86_64.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID e8562897
Preparing... ########################################### [100%]
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]#
</pre>

===createrepo.sh (Used to create repository)===
<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]# cat createrepo.sh
#!/bin/bash
BUILDDIR=$1
if [ "${BUILDDIR}" == "" ]; then
echo "Build Directory cannot be empty. Please specify full path."
exit 1
fi

COMPSFILE="/tmp/comps.xml-hypervisor"

export DISCINFO=$(head -1 ${BUILDDIR}/.discinfo)

echo "Doing: rm -f ${BUILDDIR}/repodata/*"
rm -f ${BUILDDIR}/repodata/*

echo "Doing: cp -v ${COMPSFILE} ${BUILDDIR}/repodata/comps.xml"
cp -v ${COMPSFILE} ${BUILDDIR}/repodata/comps.xml

echo "Doing: createrepo -u "media://${DISCINFO}" -g ${BUILDDIR}/repodata/comps.xml ${BUILDDIR}/"
createrepo -u "media://${DISCINFO}" -g ${BUILDDIR}/repodata/comps.xml ${BUILDDIR}/
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]#
</pre>

Usage:
<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]# ./createrepo.sh /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor
Doing: rm -f /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/repodata/*
Doing: cp -v /tmp/comps.xml-hypervisor /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/repodata/comps.xml
`/tmp/comps.xml-hypervisor' -> `/mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/repodata/comps.xml'
Doing: createrepo -u media://1272326751.405938 -g /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/repodata/comps.xml /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/
371/371 - CentOS/libgnomeui-2.16.0-5.el5.x86_64.rpm
Saving Primary metadata
Saving file lists metadata
Saving other metadata
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]#
</pre>

===buildiso.sh (Used to build the ISO file)===
<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]# cat buildiso.sh
#!/bin/bash
BUILDDIR=$1
if [ "${BUILDDIR}" == "" ]; then
echo "Build Directory cannot be empty. Please specify full path."
exit 1
fi
ISODIR="/mnt/cdimages/"
ISOFILE="CentOS-5.5-x86_64-HypervisorEdition.iso"
READMEFILE="README.WBITT"
KICKSTARTFILE="sample-kickstart.ks"

# Remove the non-english RELEASE-NOTES.
rm -f ${BUILDDIR}/RELEASE-NOTES-[a-d,f-z]*

# Remove NOTES directory, which contains RELEASE-NOTES in plethora of different languages.
rm -f ${BUILDDIR}/NOTES*

# Remove the target ISO file, if it already exists.
rm ${ISODIR}/${ISOFILE}

# [OPTIONAL] Create the README file in the CD root:
cp ${READMEFILE} ${BUILDDIR}/

# [OPTIONAL] Create a sample kickstart file in the CD root:
cp ${KICKSTARTFILE} ${BUILDDIR}/

# Finally, create the ISO.
mkisofs -r -R -J -T -v \
-no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table \
-V "CentOS-5.5-Hypervisor 64-bit" -p "KamranAzeem (kamran@wbitt.com)" -A "CentOS-5.5-Hypervisor-Edition 64 bit-2011/01/03" \
-b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat -x "lost+found" \
-o ${ISODIR}/${ISOFILE} ${BUILDDIR}

[root@buildhost-64 tmp]#
</pre>

Usage:
<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]# ./buildiso.sh /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor
INFO: UTF-8 character encoding detected by locale settings.
Assuming UTF-8 encoded filenames on source filesystem,
use -input-charset to override.
mkisofs 2.01 (cpu-pc-linux-gnu)
Scanning /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor
Scanning /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/images
Scanning /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/images/pxeboot
Excluded: /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/images/pxeboot/TRANS.TBL
Scanning /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/images/xen
Excluded: /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/images/xen/TRANS.TBL
Excluded: /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/images/TRANS.TBL
Scanning /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/repodata
Excluded: /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/TRANS.TBL
Scanning /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/CentOS
Scanning /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/isolinux
Excluded: /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/isolinux/TRANS.TBL
Excluded by match: /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/isolinux/boot.cat
Using RPM_G000.;1 for /RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-5 (RPM-GPG-KEY-beta)
Using RELEA000.;1 for /RELEASE-NOTES-en (RELEASE-NOTES-en_US)
Using RELEA000.HTM;1 for /RELEASE-NOTES-es.html (RELEASE-NOTES-en.html)
Using RELEA001.HTM;1 for /RELEASE-NOTES-en.html (RELEASE-NOTES-en_US.html)
. . .
. . .
Using XORG_01V.RPM;1 for /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/CentOS/xorg-x11-drv-digitaledge-1.1.0-1.1.x86_64.rpm (xorg-x11-drv-s3virge-1.9.1-2.1.x86_64.rpm)
Using XORG_01W.RPM;1 for /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-hypervisor/CentOS/xorg-x11-drv-s3virge-1.9.1-2.1.x86_64.rpm (xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi-7.1-2.1.el5.noarch.rpm)
Writing: Initial Padblock Start Block 0
Done with: Initial Padblock Block(s) 16
Writing: Primary Volume Descriptor Start Block 16
Done with: Primary Volume Descriptor Block(s) 1
. . .
. . .
Writing: Extension record Start Block 92
Done with: Extension record Block(s) 1
Writing: The File(s) Start Block 93
2.07% done, estimate finish Tue Jan 4 11:47:07 2011
4.13% done, estimate finish Tue Jan 4 11:47:07 2011
6.20% done, estimate finish Tue Jan 4 11:47:07 2011
8.26% done, estimate finish Tue Jan 4 11:47:19 2011
10.32% done, estimate finish Tue Jan 4 11:47:16 2011
. . .
. . .
94.97% done, estimate finish Tue Jan 4 11:47:47 2011
97.04% done, estimate finish Tue Jan 4 11:47:47 2011
99.11% done, estimate finish Tue Jan 4 11:47:46 2011
Total translation table size: 103926
Total rockridge attributes bytes: 44898
Total directory bytes: 71680
Path table size(bytes): 98
Done with: The File(s) Block(s) 241935
Writing: Ending Padblock Start Block 242028
Done with: Ending Padblock Block(s) 150
Max brk space used 84000
242178 extents written (473 MB)
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]#
</pre>

==Complete list of RPMS (for our CENTOS 5.5 x86_64 Hypervisor Edition)==
<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]# ls /mnt/cdimages/hypervisor-64/ | wc -l
327

[root@buildhost-64 tmp]# du -sh /mnt/cdimages/hypervisor-64/
271M /mnt/cdimages/hypervisor-64/
</pre>

<pre>
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]# ls -tr1 /mnt/cdimages/hypervisor-64/
alsa-lib-1.0.17-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
atk-1.12.2-1.fc6.x86_64.rpm
audiofile-0.2.6-5.x86_64.rpm
audit-libs-1.7.17-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
audit-libs-python-1.7.17-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
avahi-0.6.16-7.el5.x86_64.rpm
avahi-glib-0.6.16-7.el5.x86_64.rpm
basesystem-8.0-5.1.1.el5.centos.noarch.rpm
bash-3.2-24.el5.x86_64.rpm
binutils-2.17.50.0.6-14.el5.x86_64.rpm
bitmap-fonts-0.3-5.1.1.noarch.rpm
bitstream-vera-fonts-1.10-7.noarch.rpm
bridge-utils-1.1-2.x86_64.rpm
bzip2-1.0.3-4.el5_2.x86_64.rpm
bzip2-libs-1.0.3-4.el5_2.x86_64.rpm
cairo-1.2.4-5.el5.x86_64.rpm
celt051-0.5.1.3-0.el5.x86_64.rpm
centos-release-5-5.el5.centos.x86_64.rpm
centos-release-notes-5.5-0.x86_64.rpm
checkpolicy-1.33.1-6.el5.x86_64.rpm
chkconfig-1.3.30.2-2.el5.x86_64.rpm
chkfontpath-1.10.1-1.1.x86_64.rpm
coreutils-5.97-23.el5_4.2.x86_64.rpm
cpio-2.6-23.el5_4.1.x86_64.rpm
cpp-4.1.2-48.el5.x86_64.rpm
cracklib-2.8.9-3.3.x86_64.rpm
cracklib-dicts-2.8.9-3.3.x86_64.rpm
crontabs-1.10-8.noarch.rpm
cryptsetup-luks-1.0.3-5.el5.x86_64.rpm
cups-libs-1.3.7-18.el5.x86_64.rpm
cyrus-sasl-2.1.22-5.el5_4.3.x86_64.rpm
cyrus-sasl-lib-2.1.22-5.el5_4.3.x86_64.rpm
cyrus-sasl-md5-2.1.22-5.el5_4.3.x86_64.rpm
db4-4.3.29-10.el5.x86_64.rpm
dbus-1.1.2-14.el5.x86_64.rpm
dbus-glib-0.73-8.el5.x86_64.rpm
dbus-libs-1.1.2-14.el5.x86_64.rpm
dbus-python-0.70-9.el5_4.x86_64.rpm
desktop-backgrounds-basic-2.0-41.el5.centos.noarch.rpm
desktop-file-utils-0.10-7.x86_64.rpm
device-mapper-1.02.39-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
device-mapper-event-1.02.39-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
device-mapper-multipath-0.4.7-34.el5.x86_64.rpm
dhclient-3.0.5-23.el5.x86_64.rpm
diffutils-2.8.1-15.2.3.el5.x86_64.rpm
dmidecode-2.10-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
dmraid-1.0.0.rc13-63.el5.x86_64.rpm
dmraid-events-1.0.0.rc13-63.el5.x86_64.rpm
dnsmasq-2.45-1.1.el5_3.x86_64.rpm
docbook-dtds-1.0-30.1.noarch.rpm
e2fsprogs-1.39-23.el5.x86_64.rpm
e2fsprogs-libs-1.39-23.el5.x86_64.rpm
e4fsprogs-libs-1.41.9-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
elfutils-libelf-0.137-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
esound-0.2.36-3.x86_64.rpm
etherboot-zroms-kvm-5.4.4-13.el5.centos.x86_64.rpm
ethtool-6-4.el5.x86_64.rpm
expat-1.95.8-8.3.el5_4.2.x86_64.rpm
filesystem-2.4.0-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
findutils-4.2.27-6.el5.x86_64.rpm
fipscheck-1.2.0-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
fipscheck-lib-1.2.0-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
fontconfig-2.4.1-7.el5.x86_64.rpm
freetype-2.2.1-21.el5_3.x86_64.rpm
ftp-0.17-35.el5.x86_64.rpm
gamin-0.1.7-8.el5.x86_64.rpm
gawk-3.1.5-14.el5.x86_64.rpm
GConf2-2.14.0-9.el5.x86_64.rpm
gdbm-1.8.0-26.2.1.x86_64.rpm
glib2-2.12.3-4.el5_3.1.x86_64.rpm
glibc-2.5-49.x86_64.rpm
glibc-common-2.5-49.x86_64.rpm
gnome-keyring-0.6.0-1.fc6.x86_64.rpm
gnome-mime-data-2.4.2-3.1.x86_64.rpm
gnome-mount-0.5-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
gnome-python2-2.16.0-1.fc6.x86_64.rpm
gnome-python2-bonobo-2.16.0-1.fc6.x86_64.rpm
gnome-python2-desktop-2.16.0-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
gnome-python2-gconf-2.16.0-1.fc6.x86_64.rpm
gnome-python2-gnomekeyring-2.16.0-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
gnome-python2-gnomevfs-2.16.0-1.fc6.x86_64.rpm
gnome-vfs2-2.16.2-6.el5.x86_64.rpm
gnutls-1.4.1-3.el5_3.5.x86_64.rpm
grep-2.5.1-55.el5.x86_64.rpm
grub-0.97-13.5.x86_64.rpm
gtk2-2.10.4-20.el5.x86_64.rpm
gtk-vnc-0.3.8-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
gtk-vnc-python-0.3.8-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
gzip-1.3.5-11.el5.centos.1.x86_64.rpm
hal-0.5.8.1-59.el5.x86_64.rpm
hicolor-icon-theme-0.9-2.1.noarch.rpm
hmaccalc-0.9.6-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
hwdata-0.213.18-1.el5.1.noarch.rpm
info-4.8-14.el5.x86_64.rpm
initscripts-8.45.30-2.el5.centos.x86_64.rpm
iproute-2.6.18-11.el5.x86_64.rpm
iptables-1.3.5-5.3.el5_4.1.x86_64.rpm
iptraf-3.0.0-5.el5.x86_64.rpm
iputils-20020927-46.el5.x86_64.rpm
iscsi-initiator-utils-6.2.0.871-0.16.el5.x86_64.rpm
kbd-1.12-21.el5.x86_64.rpm
kernel-2.6.18-194.el5.x86_64.rpm
kernel-xen-2.6.18-194.el5.x86_64.rpm
keyutils-libs-1.2-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
kmod-kvm-83-164.el5.x86_64.rpm
kpartx-0.4.7-34.el5.x86_64.rpm
krb5-libs-1.6.1-36.el5_4.1.x86_64.rpm
kvm-83-164.el5.x86_64.rpm
kvm-qemu-img-83-164.el5.x86_64.rpm
kvm-tools-83-164.el5.x86_64.rpm
less-436-2.el5.x86_64.rpm
libacl-2.2.39-6.el5.x86_64.rpm
libart_lgpl-2.3.17-4.x86_64.rpm
libattr-2.4.32-1.1.x86_64.rpm
libbonobo-2.16.0-1.fc6.x86_64.rpm
libbonoboui-2.16.0-1.fc6.x86_64.rpm
libcap-1.10-26.x86_64.rpm
libcroco-0.6.1-2.1.x86_64.rpm
libdaemon-0.10-5.el5.x86_64.rpm
libdmx-1.0.2-3.1.x86_64.rpm
libdrm-2.0.2-1.1.x86_64.rpm
libevent-1.4.13-1.x86_64.rpm
libfontenc-1.0.2-2.2.el5.x86_64.rpm
libFS-1.0.0-3.1.x86_64.rpm
libgcc-4.1.2-48.el5.x86_64.rpm
libgcrypt-1.4.4-5.el5.x86_64.rpm
libglade2-2.6.0-2.x86_64.rpm
libgnome-2.16.0-6.el5.x86_64.rpm
libgnomecanvas-2.14.0-4.1.x86_64.rpm
libgnomeui-2.16.0-5.el5.x86_64.rpm
libgpg-error-1.4-2.x86_64.rpm
libgsf-1.14.1-6.1.x86_64.rpm
libgssapi-0.10-2.x86_64.rpm
libICE-1.0.1-2.1.x86_64.rpm
libIDL-0.8.7-1.fc6.x86_64.rpm
libjpeg-6b-37.x86_64.rpm
libnotify-0.4.2-6.el5.x86_64.rpm
libogg-1.1.3-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
libpcap-0.9.4-15.el5.x86_64.rpm
libpng-1.2.10-7.1.el5_3.2.x86_64.rpm
librsvg2-2.16.1-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
libselinux-1.33.4-5.5.el5.x86_64.rpm
libselinux-python-1.33.4-5.5.el5.x86_64.rpm
libselinux-utils-1.33.4-5.5.el5.x86_64.rpm
libsemanage-1.9.1-4.4.el5.x86_64.rpm
libsepol-1.15.2-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
libSM-1.0.1-3.1.x86_64.rpm
libsmi-0.4.5-2.el5.x86_64.rpm
libstdc++-4.1.2-48.el5.x86_64.rpm
libsysfs-2.0.0-6.x86_64.rpm
libtermcap-2.0.8-46.1.x86_64.rpm
libtiff-3.8.2-7.el5_3.4.x86_64.rpm
libusb-0.1.12-5.1.x86_64.rpm
libuser-0.54.7-2.1.el5_4.1.x86_64.rpm
libutempter-1.1.4-4.el5.x86_64.rpm
libvirt-0.6.3-33.el5.x86_64.rpm
libvirt-python-0.6.3-33.el5.x86_64.rpm
libvolume_id-095-14.21.el5.x86_64.rpm
libwnck-2.16.0-4.fc6.x86_64.rpm
libX11-1.0.3-11.el5.x86_64.rpm
libXau-1.0.1-3.1.x86_64.rpm
libXaw-1.0.2-8.1.x86_64.rpm
libXcursor-1.1.7-1.1.x86_64.rpm
libXdmcp-1.0.1-2.1.x86_64.rpm
libXext-1.0.1-2.1.x86_64.rpm
libXfixes-4.0.1-2.1.x86_64.rpm
libXfont-1.2.2-1.0.3.el5_1.x86_64.rpm
libXfontcache-1.0.2-3.1.x86_64.rpm
libXft-2.1.10-1.1.x86_64.rpm
libXi-1.0.1-4.el5_4.x86_64.rpm
libXinerama-1.0.1-2.1.x86_64.rpm
libxkbfile-1.0.3-3.1.x86_64.rpm
libxml2-2.6.26-2.1.2.8.x86_64.rpm
libxml2-python-2.6.26-2.1.2.8.x86_64.rpm
libXmu-1.0.2-5.x86_64.rpm
libXpm-3.5.5-3.x86_64.rpm
libXrandr-1.1.1-3.3.x86_64.rpm
libXrender-0.9.1-3.1.x86_64.rpm
libXres-1.0.1-3.1.x86_64.rpm
libxslt-1.1.17-2.el5_2.2.x86_64.rpm
libXt-1.0.2-3.2.el5.x86_64.rpm
libXTrap-1.0.0-3.1.x86_64.rpm
libXtst-1.0.1-3.1.x86_64.rpm
libXv-1.0.1-4.1.x86_64.rpm
libXxf86dga-1.0.1-3.1.x86_64.rpm
libXxf86misc-1.0.1-3.1.x86_64.rpm
libXxf86vm-1.0.1-3.1.x86_64.rpm
log4cpp-1.0-9.el5.x86_64.rpm
logrotate-3.7.4-9.x86_64.rpm
lvm2-2.02.56-8.el5.x86_64.rpm
m2crypto-0.16-6.el5.6.x86_64.rpm
MAKEDEV-3.23-1.2.x86_64.rpm
mcstrans-0.2.11-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
mesa-libGL-6.5.1-7.8.el5.x86_64.rpm
mesa-libGLU-6.5.1-7.8.el5.x86_64.rpm
mingetty-1.07-5.2.2.x86_64.rpm
mkinitrd-5.1.19.6-61.x86_64.rpm
mktemp-1.5-23.2.2.x86_64.rpm
module-init-tools-3.3-0.pre3.1.60.el5.x86_64.rpm
nash-5.1.19.6-61.x86_64.rpm
nc-1.84-10.fc6.x86_64.rpm
ncurses-5.5-24.20060715.x86_64.rpm
net-tools-1.60-81.el5.x86_64.rpm
nfs-utils-1.0.9-44.el5.x86_64.rpm
nfs-utils-lib-1.0.8-7.6.el5.x86_64.rpm
nmap-4.11-1.1.x86_64.rpm
notification-daemon-0.3.5-9.el5.x86_64.rpm
nspr-4.7.6-1.el5_4.x86_64.rpm
nss-3.12.3.99.3-1.el5.centos.2.x86_64.rpm
numactl-0.9.8-11.el5.x86_64.rpm
openjade-1.3.2-27.x86_64.rpm
openldap-2.3.43-12.el5.x86_64.rpm
opensp-1.5.2-4.x86_64.rpm
openssh-4.3p2-41.el5.x86_64.rpm
openssh-clients-4.3p2-41.el5.x86_64.rpm
openssh-server-4.3p2-41.el5.x86_64.rpm
openssl-0.9.8e-12.el5_4.6.x86_64.rpm
ORBit2-2.14.3-5.el5.x86_64.rpm
pam-0.99.6.2-6.el5_4.1.x86_64.rpm
pango-1.14.9-6.el5.centos.x86_64.rpm
parted-1.8.1-27.el5.x86_64.rpm
passwd-0.73-1.x86_64.rpm
pciutils-2.2.3-8.el5_4.x86_64.rpm
pcre-6.6-2.el5_1.7.x86_64.rpm
perl-5.8.8-27.el5.x86_64.rpm
pm-utils-0.99.3-10.el5.centos.x86_64.rpm
policycoreutils-1.33.12-14.8.el5.x86_64.rpm
popt-1.10.2.3-18.el5.x86_64.rpm
portmap-4.0-65.2.2.1.x86_64.rpm
procps-3.2.7-16.el5.x86_64.rpm
psmisc-22.2-7.x86_64.rpm
pycairo-1.2.0-1.1.x86_64.rpm
pygobject2-2.12.1-5.el5.x86_64.rpm
pygtk2-2.10.1-12.el5.x86_64.rpm
pygtk2-libglade-2.10.1-12.el5.x86_64.rpm
pyorbit-2.14.1-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
python-2.4.3-27.el5.x86_64.rpm
python-elementtree-1.2.6-5.x86_64.rpm
python-iniparse-0.2.3-4.el5.noarch.rpm
python-numeric-23.7-2.2.2.x86_64.rpm
python-sqlite-1.1.7-1.2.1.x86_64.rpm
python-urlgrabber-3.1.0-5.el5.noarch.rpm
python-virtinst-0.400.3-9.el5.noarch.rpm
qcairo-1.8.7.1-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
qffmpeg-libs-0.4.9-0.15.20080908.el5.x86_64.rpm
qpixman-0.13.3-4.el5.x86_64.rpm
qspice-libs-0.3.0-54.el5.x86_64.rpm
readline-5.1-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
redhat-logos-4.9.99-11.el5.centos.noarch.rpm
rootfiles-8.1-1.1.1.noarch.rpm
rpm-4.4.2.3-18.el5.x86_64.rpm
rpm-libs-4.4.2.3-18.el5.x86_64.rpm
rpm-python-4.4.2.3-18.el5.x86_64.rpm
rsync-2.6.8-3.1.x86_64.rpm
rsyslog-3.22.1-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
scrollkeeper-0.3.14-9.el5.x86_64.rpm
SDL-1.2.10-8.el5.x86_64.rpm
sed-4.1.5-5.fc6.x86_64.rpm
selinux-policy-2.4.6-279.el5.noarch.rpm
selinux-policy-targeted-2.4.6-279.el5.noarch.rpm
setools-3.0-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
setup-2.5.58-7.el5.noarch.rpm
sgml-common-0.6.3-18.noarch.rpm
sgpio-1.2.0_10-2.el5.x86_64.rpm
shadow-utils-4.0.17-15.el5.x86_64.rpm
shared-mime-info-0.19-5.el5.x86_64.rpm
sqlite-3.3.6-5.x86_64.rpm
startup-notification-0.8-4.1.x86_64.rpm
SysVinit-2.86-15.el5.x86_64.rpm
tar-1.15.1-30.el5.x86_64.rpm
tcl-8.4.13-4.el5.x86_64.rpm
tcpdump-3.9.4-15.el5.x86_64.rpm
tcp_wrappers-7.6-40.7.el5.x86_64.rpm
telnet-0.17-39.el5.x86_64.rpm
termcap-5.5-1.20060701.1.noarch.rpm
traceroute-2.0.1-5.el5.x86_64.rpm
ttmkfdir-3.0.9-23.el5.x86_64.rpm
tzdata-2010e-1.el5.noarch.rpm
udev-095-14.21.el5.x86_64.rpm
usermode-1.88-3.el5.2.x86_64.rpm
util-linux-2.13-0.52.el5_4.1.x86_64.rpm
vim-minimal-7.0.109-6.el5.x86_64.rpm
virt-manager-0.6.1-12.el5.x86_64.rpm
virt-viewer-0.0.2-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
vixie-cron-4.1-77.el5_4.1.x86_64.rpm
vnc-server-4.1.2-14.el5_3.1.x86_64.rpm
vte-0.14.0-2.el5.x86_64.rpm
wget-1.11.4-2.el5_4.1.x86_64.rpm
which-2.16-7.x86_64.rpm
wireshark-1.0.8-1.el5_3.1.x86_64.rpm
xen-3.0.3-105.el5.x86_64.rpm
xen-libs-3.0.3-105.el5.x86_64.rpm
xkeyboard-config-0.8-9.el5.noarch.rpm
xml-common-0.6.3-18.noarch.rpm
xorg-x11-drivers-7.1-4.2.el5.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-acecad-1.1.0-2.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-aiptek-1.0.1-2.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-ast-0.89.9-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-ati-6.6.3-3.27.el5.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-calcomp-1.1.0-1.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-cirrus-1.1.0-2.fc6.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-citron-2.2.0-1.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-digitaledge-1.1.0-1.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-dmc-1.1.0-2.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-dummy-0.2.0-2.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-dynapro-1.1.0-2.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-elo2300-1.1.0-1.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-elographics-1.1.0-1.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-evdev-1.0.0.5-5.el5.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-fbdev-0.3.0-3.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-fpit-1.1.0-1.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-hyperpen-1.1.0-2.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-i810-1.6.5-9.36.el5.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-jamstudio-1.1.0-1.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-joystick-1.1.0-1.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-keyboard-1.1.0-3.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-magellan-1.1.0-1.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-magictouch-1.0.0.5-2.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-mga-1.4.10-7.el5.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-microtouch-1.1.0-1.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-mouse-1.1.1-1.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-mutouch-1.1.0-3.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-nv-2.1.15-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-palmax-1.1.0-1.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-penmount-1.1.0-2.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-qxl-0.0.12-1.2.el5.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-s3-0.4.1-2.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-s3virge-1.9.1-2.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-savage-2.1.1-5.fc6.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-siliconmotion-1.4.1-2.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-sis-0.9.1-7.1.el5.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-sisusb-0.8.1-4.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-spaceorb-1.1.0-1.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-summa-1.1.0-1.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-tdfx-1.2.1-3.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-tek4957-1.1.0-1.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-trident-1.2.1-3.fc6.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-ur98-1.1.0-1.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-vesa-1.3.0-8.2.el5.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-vga-4.1.0-2.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-via-0.2.1-9.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-vmmouse-12.4.0-2.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-vmware-10.13.0-2.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-void-1.1.0-3.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-drv-voodoo-1.1.0-3.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-filesystem-7.1-2.fc6.noarch.rpm
xorg-x11-fonts-100dpi-7.1-2.1.el5.noarch.rpm
xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi-7.1-2.1.el5.noarch.rpm
xorg-x11-fonts-base-7.1-2.1.el5.noarch.rpm
xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-1-100dpi-7.1-2.1.el5.noarch.rpm
xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-1-75dpi-7.1-2.1.el5.noarch.rpm
xorg-x11-fonts-misc-7.1-2.1.el5.noarch.rpm
xorg-x11-fonts-truetype-7.1-2.1.el5.noarch.rpm
xorg-x11-fonts-Type1-7.1-2.1.el5.noarch.rpm
xorg-x11-font-utils-7.1-2.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-server-utils-7.1-4.fc6.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.1.1-48.76.el5.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-twm-1.0.1-3.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-utils-7.1-2.fc6.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-xauth-1.0.1-2.1.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-xdm-1.0.5-7.el5.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-xfs-1.0.2-4.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-xinit-1.0.2-15.el5.x86_64.rpm
xorg-x11-xkb-utils-1.0.2-2.1.x86_64.rpm
xterm-215-8.el5_4.1.x86_64.rpm
xz-libs-4.999.9-0.3.beta.20091007git.el5.x86_64.rpm
yum-3.2.22-26.el5.centos.noarch.rpm
yum-fastestmirror-1.1.16-14.el5.centos.1.noarch.rpm
yum-metadata-parser-1.1.2-3.el5.centos.x86_64.rpm
zip-2.31-2.el5.x86_64.rpm
zlib-1.2.3-3.x86_64.rpm
[root@buildhost-64 tmp]#
</pre>

==Screen Shots==
[[File:Test-hypervisor-Virtual Machine-1.png]]

[[File:Test-hypervisor-Virtual Machine-2.png]]

[[File:Test-hypervisor-Virtual Machine-3.png]]

[[File:Test-hypervisor-Virtual Machine-4.png]]

==Download the ISO (473 MB)==

Version: 0.1

Built: 04 Jan 2011

Size: 473 MB

http://downloads.wbitt.com/downloads/CentOS-5.5-x86_64-HypervisorEdition.iso

Check the download directory for MD5 and SHA1 checksums.

CentOS 5.5 i386 Webserver Edition (Minimal)

Kasim — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 11:27:18 GMT

Kasim:

==Why a small/server CD in the first place?==
Well, the key benefits are:
* centos.org does not provide a server CD for centos 5.5. That is a good enough reason to create one ourselves, in the first place.
* Small ISO size, makes it easier and ideal to download, even in bandwidth/volume limited environments.
* Less packages means, less vulnerabilities (if you decide to use it in production).
* Less holes to exploit
* Less packages to update, when any updates are released from upstream vendor. This results in faster update of the system. And low bandwidth consumption. In case you have a farm of such "thin" servers, lesser bandwidth would be needed to update all of the servers in your farm, compared to fat installations.
* Delivers you SSH and YUM, so you can add anything you want, on top of it.
* Creates a very small (534 MB) foot print on the disk. The Virtual machines, can now be assigned virtual disks, as low as 1.5 GB in size (tested) , or 1.0 GB in size (not tested yet).
* Multiple small VMs can be created in a disk constrained physical machine. 10 Virtual Machines would roughly consume about 15 GB of space.
* Once it is installed on a VM and rebooted, you can change the memory assignment to the VM, lowering it to 64 MB. And it will still work! (tested).
* Ideal for a small cluster.
* Provides HTTPD, out of the box, so if (for some reason) you can't connect your (v/p) box to the internet, you can still extract some productivity out of your (v/p) machine.
* Also provides PHP, MySQL server, so you can instantly setup and test your PHP based applications on a VM.

[v/p = Virtual or Physical]

==Summary==
As I mentioned earlier. The idea is to have an absolute minimum number of packages. The driving force behind this thought was a need to have such a small CD, which would be easier to download and distribute, with a capability to be topped up with additional packages from the internet, when necessary. And effective enough to get the job done. Since I have included yum in it, I (and you) can add any other RPM based package to it, without a problem. In coming days however, I will release a (so called) hypervisor version, InshaAllah (God Willing). Update: HypervisorEdition is released. [[CentOS 5.5 x86 64 Hypervisor Edition (Minimal)]]

CENTOS/RHEL already has a @core group (option), which can be used in the kickstart based installation. Even that takes up considerable space and installs CUPS, SENDMAIL and a lot of other un-necessary packages.

Since I wanted to create a very small list of RPMS. I came up with a plan. I started with kernel, and kept trying to install the related RPMS in a temporary directory using RPM. I continued including missing files (RPMS), which were being reported by RPM as required dependencies. When all dependencies got resolved, I believed I had the desired minimal file list. Update: Can be done with more ease, using yumdownloader.

When I completed the basic minimal list, I added ssh-server, wget and yum to it. I further added the following: grub (boot loader), openssh-clients (for ssh, scp, sftp, etc), and vim-minimal (editor).

Note that I (generated and) tested this on a KVM based VM.

==Infrastructure==
===Physical Host===
The physical host is a Fedora 14 machine, with 4 GB RAM, and 200 GB of disk. Out of which about 70 GB is free space.

The disk has a directory /data/cdimages , which hosts various ISO images of different OS, I have. This directory has the following layout (only the part interesting to us is shown below).

<pre>
[root@fedora14 cdimages]# tree -d
.
├── CentOS-5.5-i386
│ ├── CentOS
│ ├── images
│ │ ├── pxeboot
│ │ └── xen
│ ├── isolinux
│ ├── NOTES
│ └── repodata
└── CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver
</pre>

The /data/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386 is the full DVD copied in this directory. If you cannot afford to download full DVD, (for perfectly understandable reasons), you can download the packages, directly from the CENTOS website. The method to do so, is already mentioned here: http://cooker.wbitt.com/index.php/CENTOS_Server_CD_project#Creating_the_.22core.22_install-tree_from_a_http_site

The /data/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver directory shown above, is an empty directory. It is possible that you don't have this directory created at this moment. We can create this directory at a later stage.

The directory /data/cdimages on the physical host, is made available as an NFS writeable share to the 192.168.122.0/24 network. As following:

<pre>
[root@fedora14 cdimages]# cat /etc/exports
/data/cdimages 192.168.122.0/255.255.255.0(rw,no_root_squash)
[root@fedora14 cdimages]#

[root@fedora14 cdimages]# service nfs restart
</pre>
(Make sure that the firewall is not blocking incoming NFS requests on the physical host).

This is a good method to save space, both on the physical host and on the VMs. That means, you don't have to "fill-up" your build host (VM) will all the DVD/RPM files and ISO images. So they don't need large virtual disks for it. All of the work, can be performed, when we mount this directory /data/cdimages, from the physical host, to the buildhost-32 VM.

The physical host has the IP: 192.168.122.1 , on the virbr0 interface. It may (or may not) have any IP on it's eth0 interface, which is irrelevant to this text.

===Build Host===
The buildhost (named buildhost-32) is actually a CentOS 5.5 32 bit (i386) Virtual Machine, running inside a Fedora 14 physical host. It is installed with the minimal installation available with default CENTOS installer. It has additional packages installed on it, which are:
<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 ~]# yum -y install anaconda anaconda-runtime mkisofs cdrecord
</pre>
The BuildHost has only 512 MB Virtual Memory, and 4GB Virtual Disk. We basically do not need much disk space on the build host. The space is needed to pull the RPMs using "yumdownloader" command. The BuildHost (VM) has the IP: 192.168.122.94, on its eth0 interface.

==Steps==
===Make the repositories available on the buildhost-32===
See if you are able to view the NFS share made available on the physical host.
<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 ~]# showmount -e 192.168.122.1
Export list for 192.168.122.1:
/data/cdimages 192.168.122.0/255.255.255.0
</pre>

Create a mount point on the build host, and mount the NFS share on it.

<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 ~]# mkdir /mnt/cdimages

[root@buildhost-32 ~]# mount -t nfs 192.168.122.1:/data/cdimages/ /mnt/cdimages/

[root@buildhost-32 ~]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/vda1 3.8G 913M 2.8G 34% /
tmpfs 252M 0 252M 0% /dev/shm
192.168.122.1:/data/cdimages/
191G 113G 69G 63% /mnt/cdimages
[root@buildhost-32 ~]#
</pre>

As you can see, the /data/cdimages from the physical host is now available on our buildhost-32, as /mnt/cdimages.

Create an empty directory CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver inside /mnt/cdimages, if not already done so. It must be empty though. This directory is going to hold our new custom distribution.

<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 ~]# mkdir /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver
</pre>

Copy the DVD structure, (excluding the CentOS directory), from /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386/ to this newly created directory /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/.
<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 ~]# rsync -av --exclude CentOS/ \
/mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386/ /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/
</pre>

Without the CentOS directory, which holds all the RPMs of the distribution, the structure (with some necessary files), is about 226 MB in total.
<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 ~]# du -sh /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/
226M /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/
</pre>

I created temporary directories named /tmp/transitRPMs and /tmp/RPMtest. /tmp/transitRPMs will hold the RPMs pulled by yumdownloader. /tmp/RPMtest will be used to test the RPMs. This is optional, because it doesn't make much sense after the packages are downloaded using yumdownloader, which checks for dependencies itself.
Note: We cannot use directories created inside NFS mounts to use with RPM, or YUM, or YUMDOWNLOADER. Thus it is important to have a directory created on the local filesystem for both pulling the RPMs and testing them.
<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]# mkdir /tmp/transitRPMs

[root@buildhost-32 tmp]# mkdir /tmp/RPMtest
</pre>

===Pulling the necessary RPMs===
Note: The transitRPMs (or whatever name you chose for it), must not be on an NFS share. I found problems getting RPM and YUM to work inside NFS mounts.

<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]# yum -y install yum-utils
</pre>

Simple way to pull the the required RPM, along it's dependencies, is to use YUMDOWNLOADER (part of yum-utils package). The other (manual) method is to of-course copy the files one at a time, to the /tmp/transitRPMs directory. (Not very appealing of-course).

Here is how to pull just the kernel and all of it's related dependencies.
<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]# yumdownloader --destdir=/tmp/transitRPMs/ --installroot=/tmp/transitRPMs/ --resolve kernel
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
local | 1.1 kB 00:00
local/primary | 920 kB 00:00
local 2599/2599
--> Running transaction check
---> Package kernel.i686 0:2.6.18-194.el5 set to be installed
--> Processing Dependency: initscripts >= 8.11.1-1 for package: kernel
--> Processing Dependency: mkinitrd >= 4.2.21-1 for package: kernel
--> Processing Dependency: /bin/sh for package: kernel
--> Processing Dependency: module-init-tools for package: kernel
--> Processing Dependency: fileutils for package: kernel
--> Running transaction check
---> Package bash.i386 0:3.2-24.el5 set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.2) for package: bash
--> Processing Dependency: libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.3.4) for package: bash
. . .
--> Processing Dependency: libkeyutils.so.1(KEYUTILS_0.3) for package: krb5-libs
--> Running transaction check
---> Package keyutils-libs.i386 0:1.2-1.el5 set to be updated
--> Finished Dependency Resolution
kernel-2.6.18-194.el5.i686.rpm | 17 MB 00:00
zlib-1.2.3-3.i386.rpm | 50 kB 00:00
device-mapper-event-1.02.39-1.el5.i386.rpm | 20 kB 00:00
nspr-4.7.6-1.el5_4.i386.rpm | 119 kB 00:00 . . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
bzip2-libs-1.0.3-4.el5_2.i386.rpm | 37 kB 00:00
findutils-4.2.27-6.el5.i386.rpm | 294 kB 00:00
libstdc++-4.1.2-48.el5.i386.rpm | 362 kB 00:00
cpio-2.6-23.el5_4.1.i386.rpm
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]#
</pre>

<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]# ls /tmp/transitRPMs/*.rpm | wc -l
82

[root@buildhost-32 tmp]# du -sh /tmp/transitRPMs/
98M /tmp/transitRPMs/
</pre>

Of-course, the above is minimal most as it can get. It will give you a login prompt and shell access. But you won't have yum, wget, ftp, etc. And, you have to assign IP as well yourself. However this can be ideal for testing multiple machines, just to test availability over the network, with ping. But again, nothing fancy.

To get all the packages we need, for our "WebserverEdition", below is what all I pulled.

<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 ~]# yumdownloader --destdir=/tmp/transitRPMs/ --installroot=/tmp/transitRPMs/ --resolve kernel \
vim-minimal wget yum dhclient grub rootfiles openssh-clients openssh-server passwd\
iptables selinux-policy-targeted setools kernel-xen telnet tcpdump wireshark nmap policycoreutils-newrole star attr\
zip bzip2 rsync which traceroute ftp vixie-cron iptraf sysklogd \
httpd php mysql-server postfix mod_ssl php-mysql mod_auth_mysql dovecot spamassassin squirrelmail \
vsftpd xferstats elinks webalizer php-gd crypto-utils kudzu
</pre>

<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]# ls /tmp/transitRPMs/*.rpm | wc -l
211

[root@buildhost-32 tmp]# du -sh /tmp/transitRPMs/
250M /tmp/transitRPMs/
</pre>

===Test the installation of pulled RPMs (for the sake of completeness)===
I use the testrun.sh script, shown in the scripts section below, to test the installation of RPMs, which were pulled just now using yumdownloader. You have to edit the script to specify correct locations of the RPMTEST variable.
<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]# ./testrun.sh /tmp/transitRPMs/
warning: /tmp/transitRPMs//apr-1.2.7-11.el5_3.1.i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID e8562897
Preparing... ########################################### [100%]
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]#
</pre>
No errors here. This means that the test installation of the RPMs was successful. Good.

===Synchronize the transitRPMs location with the build-tree===
Once the test is successful, you can rsync this (transitRPMs) directory to your buildtree (/mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver).

Create the CentOS directory in your build directory, if you have not created it already. It should be empty at this point.
<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]# mkdir /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/CentOS
</pre>

Now sync the directory.
<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]# rsync -av --exclude var/ webserver/ /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/CentOS/
building file list ... done
./
MAKEDEV-3.23-1.2.i386.rpm
SysVinit-2.86-15.el5.i386.rpm
apr-1.2.7-11.el5_3.1.i386.rpm
apr-util-1.2.7-11.el5.i386.rpm
aspell-0.60.3-7.1.i386.rpm
. . .
. . .
yum-fastestmirror-1.1.16-14.el5.centos.1.noarch.rpm
yum-metadata-parser-1.1.2-3.el5.centos.i386.rpm
zip-2.31-2.el5.i386.rpm
zlib-1.2.3-3.i386.rpm

sent 261452566 bytes received 5024 bytes 14132842.70 bytes/sec
total size is 261401513 speedup is 1.00
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]#
</pre>

===Edit the comps.xml file as per requirements===
I pulled a copy of original comps.xml from the original CENTOS repository. Removed all the "xml:lang" lines from it. Also removed all un-necessary groups and categories from it. Modified contents of the groups: core, base, xen and kvm. Below is the minimal version of comps.xml, for my CENTOS 5.5 64 bit Hypervisor Edition.

Note: When you edit this file, you will need to keep note of few things. [Needs update]. comps.xml groups and categories , and the titles shown during the installer / packages selection screen are two different things. I had to fool the installer , by retaining most of the "server" groups (filled with a simple vim-minimal package) in comps.xml . This was the only method I found out, to be able to show "Server" on the package selection screen. More on this later.

<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]# cat comps.xml-webserver
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE newcomps PUBLIC "-//CentOS//DTD Comps info//EN" "comps.dtd">
<comps>
<group>
<id>base</id>
<name>Base</name>
<description>This group includes a minimal set of packages. Useful for creating small router/firewall boxes, for example.</description>
<default>true</default>
<uservisible>true</uservisible>
<packagelist>
<packagereq type="default">attr</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">bzip2</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">dhclient</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">elinks</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">ftp</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">grub</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">iptables</packagereq>
<packagereq type="optional">iptraf</packagereq>
<packagereq type="optional">kernel-xen</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">nmap</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">openssh-clients</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">openssh-server</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">passwd</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">policycoreutils-newrole</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">rootfiles</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">rsync</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">selinux-policy</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">selinux-policy-targeted</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">setools</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">star</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">sysklogd</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">tcpdump</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">telnet</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">traceroute</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">vim-minimal</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">vixie-cron</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">which</packagereq>
<packagereq type="optional">wireshark</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">zip</packagereq>
</packagelist>
</group>

<group>
<id>core</id>
<name>Core</name>
<description>Smallest possible installation</description>
<default>true</default>
<uservisible>false</uservisible>
<packagelist>
<packagereq type="mandatory">SysVinit</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">basesystem</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">bash</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">centos-release</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">centos-release-notes</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">coreutils</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">cpio</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">e2fsprogs</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">filesystem</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">glibc</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">initscripts</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">iproute</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">iputils</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">libgcc</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">libtermcap</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">mkinitrd</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">procps</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">readline</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">redhat-logos</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">rpm</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">setup</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">shadow-utils</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">termcap</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">util-linux</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">wget</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">yum</packagereq>
<packagereq type="mandatory">kudzu</packagereq>
</packagelist>
</group>

<group>
<id>dns-server</id>
<name>DNS Name Server</name>
<description>This package group allows you to run a DNS name server (BIND) on the system.</description>
<default>false</default>
<uservisible>false</uservisible>
<packagelist>
<packagereq type="optional">vim-minimal</packagereq>
</packagelist>
</group>

<group>
<id>ftp-server</id>
<name>FTP Server</name>
<description>These tools allow you to run an FTP server on the system.</description>
<default>false</default>
<uservisible>true</uservisible>
<packagelist>
<packagereq type="default">vsftpd</packagereq>
<packagereq type="optional">xferstats</packagereq>
</packagelist>
</group>

<group>
<id>legacy-network-server</id>
<name>Legacy Network Server</name>
<description>These packages include servers for old network protocols such as rsh and telnet.</description>
<default>false</default>
<uservisible>false</uservisible>
<packagelist>
<packagereq type="optional">vim-minimal</packagereq>
</packagelist>
</group>

<group>
<id>mail-server</id>
<name>Mail Server</name>
<description>These packages allow you to configure an IMAP or SMTP mail server.</description>
<default>false</default>
<uservisible>true</uservisible>
<packagelist>
<packagereq type="optional">dovecot</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">postfix</packagereq>
<packagereq type="optional">spamassassin</packagereq>
<packagereq type="optional">squirrelmail</packagereq>
</packagelist>
</group>

<group>
<id>mysql</id>
<name>MySQL Database</name>
<description>This package group contains packages useful for use with MySQL.</description>
<default>false</default>
<uservisible>true</uservisible>
<packagelist>
<packagereq type="mandatory">mysql</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">mysql-server</packagereq>
</packagelist>
</group>

<group>
<id>network-server</id>
<name>Network Servers</name>
<description>These packages include network-based servers such as DHCP, Kerberos and NIS.</description>
<default>false</default>
<uservisible>false</uservisible>
<packagelist>
<packagereq type="optional">vim-minimal</packagereq>
</packagelist>
</group>

<group>
<id>news-server</id>
<name>News Server</name>
<description>This group allows you to configure the system as a news server.</description>
<default>false</default>
<uservisible>false</uservisible>
<packagelist>
<packagereq type="optional">vim-minimal</packagereq>
</packagelist>
</group>

<group>
<id>printing</id>
<name>Printing Support</name>
<description>Install these tools to enable the system to print or act as a print server.</description>
<default>false</default>
<uservisible>false</uservisible>
<packagelist>
<packagereq type="optional">vim-minimal</packagereq>
</packagelist>
</group>

<group>
<id>sql-server</id>
<name>PostgreSQL Database</name>
<description>This package group includes packages useful for use with Postgresql.</description>
<default>false</default>
<uservisible>false</uservisible>
<packagelist>
<packagereq type="optional">vim-minimal</packagereq>
</packagelist>
</group>

<group>
<id>server-cfg</id>
<name>Server Configuration Tools</name>
<description>This group contains all of CentOS's custom server configuration tools.</description>
<default>false</default>
<uservisible>false</uservisible>
<packagelist>
<packagereq type="optional">vim-minimal</packagereq>
</packagelist>
</group>

<group>
<id>web-server</id>
<name>Web Server</name>
<description>These tools allow you to run a Web server on the system.</description>
<default>true</default>
<uservisible>true</uservisible>
<packagelist>
<packagereq type="conditional" requires="httpd">crypto-utils</packagereq>
<packagereq type="conditional" requires="httpd">distcache</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">httpd</packagereq>
<packagereq type="conditional" requires="httpd">mod_auth_mysql</packagereq>
<packagereq type="conditional" requires="httpd">mod_ssl</packagereq>
<packagereq type="default">php</packagereq>
<packagereq type="conditional" requires="php">php-gd</packagereq>
<packagereq type="conditional" requires="php">php-mysql</packagereq>
<packagereq type="optional">webalizer</packagereq>
</packagelist>
</group>

<group>
<id>smb-server</id>
<name>Windows File Server</name>
<description>This package group allows you to share files between Linux and MS Windows(tm) systems.</description>
<default>false</default>
<uservisible>false</uservisible>
<packagelist>
<packagereq type="optional">vim-minimal</packagereq>
</packagelist>
</group>

<category>
<id>base-system</id>
<name>Base System</name>
<description>Various core pieces of the system.</description>
<display_order>92</display_order>
<grouplist>
<groupid>base</groupid>
</grouplist>
</category>

<category>
<id>servers</id>
<name>Servers</name>
<description>Software used for running network servers</description>
<display_order>90</display_order>
<grouplist>
<groupid>web-server</groupid>
<groupid>ftp-server</groupid>
<groupid>mail-server</groupid>
<groupid>mysql</groupid>
</grouplist>
</category>
</comps>
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]#
</pre>

You may want to run a sanity check on your comps.xml file. It will reveal any errors/typing mistakes, etc.
<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]# xmllint --valid comps.xml-webserver
</pre>

===Create the Repository===
Use the script shown below in the scripts section to create the repository in your build directory. You have to edit the script to specify correct values for the variables used for COMPS.XML file.
<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]# ./createrepo.sh /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver
Doing: rm -f /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/repodata/*
Doing: cp -v /tmp/comps.xml-webserver /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/repodata/comps.xml
`/tmp/comps.xml-webserver' -> `/mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/repodata/comps.xml'
Doing: createrepo -u media://1272587247.016243 -g /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/repodata/comps.xml /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/
211/211 - CentOS/fipscheck-lib-1.2.0-1.el5.i386.rpm
Saving Primary metadata
Saving file lists metadata
Saving other metadata
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]#
</pre>

===Build the ISO file out of your build-tree===
Time for the final step. Build the ISO. Use the buildiso.sh script shown in the scripts section below, to create the ISO. You have to edit the script to specify location and name of the ISO file.
<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]# ./buildiso.sh /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver
rm: cannot remove `/mnt/cdimages//CentOS-5.5-i386-WebserverEdition.iso': No such file or directory
INFO: UTF-8 character encoding detected by locale settings.
Assuming UTF-8 encoded filenames on source filesystem,
use -input-charset to override.
mkisofs 2.01 (cpu-pc-linux-gnu)
Scanning /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver
Scanning /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/images
Scanning /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/CentOS
Scanning /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/isolinux
Excluded: /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/isolinux/TRANS.TBL
Excluded by match: /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/isolinux/boot.cat
Using RPM_G000.;1 for /RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-5 (RPM-GPG-KEY-beta)
Using RELEA000.;1 for /RELEASE-NOTES-en (RELEASE-NOTES-en_US)
Using RELEA000.HTM;1 for /RELEASE-NOTES-es.html (RELEASE-NOTES-en.html)
Using RELEA001.HTM;1 for /RELEASE-NOTES-en.html (RELEASE-NOTES-en_US.html)
. . .
. . .
Writing: Initial Padblock Start Block 0
Done with: Initial Padblock Block(s) 16
Writing: Primary Volume Descriptor Start Block 16
Done with: Primary Volume Descriptor Block(s) 1
Writing: Eltorito Volume Descriptor Start Block 17
Size of boot image is 4 sectors -> No emulation
Done with: Eltorito Volume Descriptor Block(s) 1
Writing: Joliet Volume Descriptor Start Block 18
Done with: Joliet Volume Descriptor Block(s) 1
. . .
. . .
Writing: Joliet directory tree Start Block 53
Done with: Joliet directory tree Block(s) 17
Writing: Directory tree cleanup Start Block 70
Done with: Directory tree cleanup Block(s) 0
Writing: Extension record Start Block 70
Done with: Extension record Block(s) 1
Writing: The File(s) Start Block 71
2.34% done, estimate finish Wed Jan 5 12:22:39 2011
4.68% done, estimate finish Wed Jan 5 12:22:18 2011
7.02% done, estimate finish Wed Jan 5 12:22:11 2011
. . .
. . .
91.23% done, estimate finish Wed Jan 5 12:22:23 2011
93.57% done, estimate finish Wed Jan 5 12:22:22 2011
95.90% done, estimate finish Wed Jan 5 12:22:22 2011
98.24% done, estimate finish Wed Jan 5 12:22:24 2011
Total translation table size: 64086
Total rockridge attributes bytes: 27318
Total directory bytes: 45056
Path table size(bytes): 98
Done with: The File(s) Block(s) 213539
Writing: Ending Padblock Start Block 213610
Done with: Ending Padblock Block(s) 150
Max brk space used 3f000
213760 extents written (417 MB)
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]#
</pre>

Thats all. The ISO file is ready. Burn it on a CD, or use directly, or whatever suits you.

End of steps. The task of building the custom CENTOS ISO is successfully completed at this point.

==Scripts used to test RPMs, create repo, and build ISO==
===testrun.sh (Used for testing a directory full of RPMs)===
<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]# cat testrun.sh
#!/bin/bash
TESTDIR=$1
if [ "$TESTDIR" == "" ] ; then
echo "You should provide the name of test directory containing RPMS. Please specify full path."
exit 1
fi
RPMTEST="/tmp/RPMtest"
rpm --initdb --dbpath ${RPMTEST}
rpm --test --dbpath ${RPMTEST} --root ${RPMTEST} -ivh ${TESTDIR}/*.rpm
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]#
</pre>

Usage:
<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]# ./testrun.sh webserver/
warning: webserver//apr-1.2.7-11.el5_3.1.i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID e8562897
Preparing... ########################################### [100%]
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]#
</pre>

===createrepo.sh (Used to create repository)===
<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]# cat createrepo.sh
#!/bin/bash
BUILDDIR=$1
if [ "${BUILDDIR}" == "" ]; then
echo "Build Directory cannot be empty. Please specify full path."
exit 1
fi

COMPSFILE="/tmp/comps.xml-webserver"

export DISCINFO=$(head -1 ${BUILDDIR}/.discinfo)

echo "Doing: rm -f ${BUILDDIR}/repodata/*"
rm -f ${BUILDDIR}/repodata/*

echo "Doing: cp -v ${COMPSFILE} ${BUILDDIR}/repodata/comps.xml"
cp -v ${COMPSFILE} ${BUILDDIR}/repodata/comps.xml

echo "Doing: createrepo -u "media://${DISCINFO}" -g ${BUILDDIR}/repodata/comps.xml ${BUILDDIR}/"
createrepo -u "media://${DISCINFO}" -g ${BUILDDIR}/repodata/comps.xml ${BUILDDIR}/
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]#
</pre>

Usage:
<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]# ./createrepo.sh /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver
Doing: rm -f /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/repodata/*
Doing: cp -v /tmp/comps.xml-webserver /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/repodata/comps.xml
`/tmp/comps.xml-webserver' -> `/mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/repodata/comps.xml'
Doing: createrepo -u media://1272587247.016243 -g /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/repodata/comps.xml /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/
211/211 - CentOS/fipscheck-lib-1.2.0-1.el5.i386.rpm
Saving Primary metadata
Saving file lists metadata
Saving other metadata
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]#
</pre>

===buildiso.sh (Used to build the ISO file)===
<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]# cat buildiso.sh
#!/bin/bash
BUILDDIR=$1
if [ "${BUILDDIR}" == "" ]; then
echo "Build Directory cannot be empty. Please specify full path."
exit 1
fi
ISODIR="/mnt/cdimages/"
ISOFILE="CentOS-5.5-i386-HypervisorEdition.iso"
READMEFILE="README.WBITT"
KICKSTARTFILE="sample-kickstart.ks"

# Remove the non-english RELEASE-NOTES.
rm -f ${BUILDDIR}/RELEASE-NOTES-[a-d,f-z]*

# Remove NOTES directory, which contains RELEASE-NOTES in plethora of different languages.
rm -f ${BUILDDIR}/NOTES*

# Remove the target ISO file, if it already exists.
rm ${ISODIR}/${ISOFILE}

# [OPTIONAL] Create the README file in the CD root:
cp ${READMEFILE} ${BUILDDIR}/

# [OPTIONAL] Create a sample kickstart file in the CD root:
cp ${KICKSTARTFILE} ${BUILDDIR}/

# Finally, create the ISO.
mkisofs -r -R -J -T -v \
-no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table \
-V "CentOS-5.5-Webserver 32-bit" -p "KamranAzeem (kamran@wbitt.com)" -A "CentOS-5.5-Webserver-Edition 32 bit-2011/01/08" \
-b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat -x "lost+found" \
-o ${ISODIR}/${ISOFILE} ${BUILDDIR}

[root@buildhost-32 tmp]#
</pre>

Usage:
<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]# ./buildiso.sh /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver
rm: cannot remove `/mnt/cdimages//CentOS-5.5-i386-WebserverEdition.iso': No such file or directory
INFO: UTF-8 character encoding detected by locale settings.
Assuming UTF-8 encoded filenames on source filesystem,
use -input-charset to override.
mkisofs 2.01 (cpu-pc-linux-gnu)
Scanning /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver
Scanning /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/images
Scanning /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/CentOS
Scanning /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/isolinux
Excluded: /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/isolinux/TRANS.TBL
Excluded by match: /mnt/cdimages/CentOS-5.5-i386-webserver/isolinux/boot.cat
Using RPM_G000.;1 for /RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-5 (RPM-GPG-KEY-beta)
Using RELEA000.;1 for /RELEASE-NOTES-en (RELEASE-NOTES-en_US)
Using RELEA000.HTM;1 for /RELEASE-NOTES-es.html (RELEASE-NOTES-en.html)
Using RELEA001.HTM;1 for /RELEASE-NOTES-en.html (RELEASE-NOTES-en_US.html)
. . .
. . .
Writing: Initial Padblock Start Block 0
Done with: Initial Padblock Block(s) 16
Writing: Primary Volume Descriptor Start Block 16
Done with: Primary Volume Descriptor Block(s) 1
Writing: Eltorito Volume Descriptor Start Block 17
Size of boot image is 4 sectors -> No emulation
Done with: Eltorito Volume Descriptor Block(s) 1
Writing: Joliet Volume Descriptor Start Block 18
Done with: Joliet Volume Descriptor Block(s) 1
. . .
. . .
Writing: Joliet directory tree Start Block 53
Done with: Joliet directory tree Block(s) 17
Writing: Directory tree cleanup Start Block 70
Done with: Directory tree cleanup Block(s) 0
Writing: Extension record Start Block 70
Done with: Extension record Block(s) 1
Writing: The File(s) Start Block 71
2.34% done, estimate finish Wed Jan 5 12:22:39 2011
4.68% done, estimate finish Wed Jan 5 12:22:18 2011
7.02% done, estimate finish Wed Jan 5 12:22:11 2011
. . .
. . .
91.23% done, estimate finish Wed Jan 5 12:22:23 2011
93.57% done, estimate finish Wed Jan 5 12:22:22 2011
95.90% done, estimate finish Wed Jan 5 12:22:22 2011
98.24% done, estimate finish Wed Jan 5 12:22:24 2011
Total translation table size: 64086
Total rockridge attributes bytes: 27318
Total directory bytes: 45056
Path table size(bytes): 98
Done with: The File(s) Block(s) 213539
Writing: Ending Padblock Start Block 213610
Done with: Ending Padblock Block(s) 150
Max brk space used 3f000
213760 extents written (417 MB)
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]#
</pre>

==Complete list of RPMS (for our CENTOS 5.5 i386 Webserver Edition)==
<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]# ls webserver/*.rpm | wc -l
211

[root@buildhost-32 tmp]# du -sh webserver/
250M webserver/
</pre>

<pre>
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]# ls -tr1 webserver/*.rpm
perl-Archive-Tar-1.30-1.fc6.noarch.rpm
perl-libwww-perl-5.805-1.1.1.noarch.rpm
perl-IO-Zlib-1.04-4.2.1.noarch.rpm
perl-IO-Socket-SSL-1.01-1.fc6.noarch.rpm
perl-IO-Socket-INET6-2.51-2.fc6.noarch.rpm
perl-HTML-Tagset-3.10-2.1.1.noarch.rpm
perl-HTML-Parser-3.55-1.fc6.i386.rpm
perl-Digest-SHA1-2.11-1.2.1.i386.rpm
perl-Digest-HMAC-1.01-15.noarch.rpm
perl-Compress-Zlib-1.42-1.fc6.i386.rpm
perl-URI-1.35-3.noarch.rpm
perl-Socket6-0.19-3.fc6.i386.rpm
perl-Net-SSLeay-1.30-4.fc6.i386.rpm
perl-Net-IP-1.25-2.fc6.noarch.rpm
perl-Net-DNS-0.59-3.el5.i386.rpm
procmail-3.22-17.1.el5.centos.i386.rpm
python-sqlite-1.1.7-1.2.1.i386.rpm
python-elementtree-1.2.6-5.i386.rpm
rootfiles-8.1-1.1.1.noarch.rpm
rsync-2.6.8-3.1.i386.rpm
sed-4.1.5-5.fc6.i386.rpm
setools-3.0-3.el5.i386.rpm
slang-2.0.6-4.el5.i386.rpm
termcap-5.5-1.20060701.1.noarch.rpm
webalizer-2.01_10-30.1.i386.rpm
which-2.16-7.i386.rpm
xferstats-2.16-14.1.i386.rpm
xorg-x11-filesystem-7.1-2.fc6.noarch.rpm
zlib-1.2.3-3.i386.rpm
MAKEDEV-3.23-1.2.i386.rpm
aspell-0.60.3-7.1.i386.rpm
aspell-en-6.0-2.1.i386.rpm
basesystem-8.0-5.1.1.el5.centos.noarch.rpm
crontabs-1.10-8.noarch.rpm
distcache-1.4.5-14.1.i386.rpm
gawk-3.1.5-14.el5.i386.rpm
gdbm-1.8.0-26.2.1.i386.rpm
gmp-4.1.4-10.el5.i386.rpm
info-4.8-14.el5.i386.rpm
iptraf-3.0.0-5.el5.i386.rpm
keyutils-libs-1.2-1.el5.i386.rpm
libXpm-3.5.5-3.i386.rpm
libXdmcp-1.0.1-2.1.i386.rpm
libXau-1.0.1-3.1.i386.rpm
libattr-2.4.32-1.1.i386.rpm
libcap-1.10-26.i386.rpm
libgpg-error-1.4-2.i386.rpm
libjpeg-6b-37.i386.rpm
libidn-0.6.5-1.1.i386.rpm
libtermcap-2.0.8-46.1.i386.rpm
libsysfs-2.0.0-6.i386.rpm
libusb-0.1.12-5.1.i386.rpm
mailcap-2.1.23-1.fc6.noarch.rpm
mktemp-1.5-23.2.2.i386.rpm
mingetty-1.07-5.2.2.i386.rpm
ncurses-5.5-24.20060715.i386.rpm
nmap-4.11-1.1.i386.rpm
cracklib-2.8.9-3.3.i386.rpm
cracklib-dicts-2.8.9-3.3.i386.rpm
newt-perl-1.08-9.2.2.i386.rpm
telnet-0.17-39.el5.i386.rpm
pcre-6.6-2.el5_1.7.i386.rpm
fontconfig-2.4.1-7.el5.i386.rpm
crypto-utils-2.3-2.el5.i386.rpm
diffutils-2.8.1-15.2.3.el5.i386.rpm
libsmi-0.4.5-2.el5.i386.rpm
pkgconfig-0.21-2.el5.i386.rpm
python-iniparse-0.2.3-4.el5.noarch.rpm
postfix-2.3.3-2.1.el5_2.i386.rpm
bzip2-libs-1.0.3-4.el5_2.i386.rpm
bzip2-1.0.3-4.el5_2.i386.rpm
bash-3.2-24.el5.i386.rpm
dovecot-1.0.7-7.el5.i386.rpm
elfutils-libelf-0.137-3.el5.i386.rpm
ftp-0.17-35.el5.i386.rpm
gnupg-1.4.5-14.i386.rpm
logrotate-3.7.4-9.i386.rpm
mcstrans-0.2.11-3.el5.i386.rpm
perl-DBI-1.52-2.el5.i386.rpm
perl-DBD-MySQL-3.0007-2.el5.i386.rpm
python-urlgrabber-3.1.0-5.el5.noarch.rpm
sgpio-1.2.0_10-2.el5.i386.rpm
spamassassin-3.2.5-1.el5.i386.rpm
tmpwatch-2.9.7-1.1.el5.2.i386.rpm
SysVinit-2.86-15.el5.i386.rpm
traceroute-2.0.1-5.el5.i386.rpm
zip-2.31-2.el5.i386.rpm
redhat-logos-4.9.99-11.el5.centos.noarch.rpm
glib2-2.12.3-4.el5_3.1.i386.rpm
mod_auth_mysql-3.0.0-3.2.el5_3.i386.rpm
libpng-1.2.10-7.1.el5_3.2.i386.rpm
file-4.17-15.el5_3.1.i386.rpm
freetype-2.2.1-21.el5_3.i386.rpm
wireshark-1.0.8-1.el5_3.1.i386.rpm
nss-3.12.3.99.3-1.el5.centos.2.i386.rpm
apr-1.2.7-11.el5_3.1.i386.rpm
libxml2-2.6.26-2.1.2.8.i386.rpm
gnutls-1.4.1-3.el5_3.5.i386.rpm
db4-4.3.29-10.el5.i386.rpm
e2fsprogs-1.39-23.el5.i386.rpm
e2fsprogs-libs-1.39-23.el5.i386.rpm
fipscheck-1.2.0-1.el5.i386.rpm
findutils-4.2.27-6.el5.i386.rpm
fipscheck-lib-1.2.0-1.el5.i386.rpm
grub-0.97-13.5.i386.rpm
libgcrypt-1.4.4-5.el5.i386.rpm
libsemanage-1.9.1-4.4.el5.i386.rpm
libselinux-utils-1.33.4-5.5.el5.i386.rpm
libselinux-python-1.33.4-5.5.el5.i386.rpm
libselinux-1.33.4-5.5.el5.i386.rpm
libX11-1.0.3-11.el5.i386.rpm
m2crypto-0.16-6.el5.6.i386.rpm
perl-5.8.8-27.el5.i386.rpm
rpm-4.4.2.3-18.el5.i386.rpm
python-2.4.3-27.el5.i386.rpm
popt-1.10.2.3-18.el5.i386.rpm
rpm-python-4.4.2.3-18.el5.i386.rpm
rpm-libs-4.4.2.3-18.el5.i386.rpm
sqlite-3.3.6-5.i386.rpm
tcl-8.4.13-4.el5.i386.rpm
vim-minimal-7.0.109-6.el5.i386.rpm
udev-095-14.21.el5.i386.rpm
yum-metadata-parser-1.1.2-3.el5.centos.i386.rpm
iputils-20020927-46.el5.i386.rpm
grep-2.5.1-55.el5.i386.rpm
tcp_wrappers-7.6-40.7.el5.i386.rpm
setup-2.5.58-7.el5.noarch.rpm
readline-5.1-3.el5.i386.rpm
psmisc-22.2-7.i386.rpm
initscripts-8.45.30-2.el5.centos.i386.rpm
postgresql-libs-8.1.18-2.el5_4.1.i386.rpm
squirrelmail-1.4.8-5.el5.centos.10.noarch.rpm
elinks-0.11.1-6.el5_4.1.i386.rpm
nspr-4.7.6-1.el5_4.i386.rpm
iptables-1.3.5-5.3.el5_4.1.i386.rpm
wget-1.11.4-2.el5_4.1.i386.rpm
expat-1.95.8-8.3.el5_4.2.i386.rpm
vsftpd-2.0.5-16.el5_4.1.i386.rpm
gd-2.0.33-9.4.el5_4.2.i386.rpm
vixie-cron-4.1-77.el5_4.1.i386.rpm
krb5-libs-1.6.1-36.el5_4.1.i386.rpm
yum-fastestmirror-1.1.16-14.el5.centos.1.noarch.rpm
util-linux-2.13-0.52.el5_4.1.i386.rpm
gzip-1.3.5-11.el5.centos.1.i386.rpm
coreutils-5.97-23.el5_4.2.i386.rpm
mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_4.2.i386.rpm
mysql-server-5.0.77-4.el5_4.2.i386.rpm
pam-0.99.6.2-6.el5_4.1.i386.rpm
tzdata-2010e-1.el5.noarch.rpm
cpio-2.6-23.el5_4.1.i386.rpm
cyrus-sasl-lib-2.1.22-5.el5_4.3.i386.rpm
cyrus-sasl-2.1.22-5.el5_4.3.i386.rpm
openssl-0.9.8e-12.el5_4.6.i686.rpm
yum-3.2.22-26.el5.centos.noarch.rpm
audit-libs-python-1.7.17-3.el5.i386.rpm
audit-libs-1.7.17-3.el5.i386.rpm
apr-util-1.2.7-11.el5.i386.rpm
centos-release-notes-5.5-0.i386.rpm
centos-release-5-5.el5.centos.i386.rpm
binutils-2.17.50.0.6-14.el5.i386.rpm
curl-7.15.5-9.el5.i386.rpm
chkconfig-1.3.30.2-2.el5.i386.rpm
checkpolicy-1.33.1-6.el5.i386.rpm
dmraid-events-1.0.0.rc13-63.el5.i386.rpm
dmraid-1.0.0.rc13-63.el5.i386.rpm
dhclient-3.0.5-23.el5.i386.rpm
device-mapper-multipath-0.4.7-34.el5.i386.rpm
device-mapper-event-1.02.39-1.el5.i386.rpm
device-mapper-1.02.39-1.el5.i386.rpm
filesystem-2.4.0-3.el5.i386.rpm
ethtool-6-4.el5.i386.rpm
glibc-common-2.5-49.i386.rpm
glibc-2.5-49.i686.rpm
httpd-2.2.3-43.el5.centos.i386.rpm
hmaccalc-0.9.6-3.el5.i386.rpm
kernel-2.6.18-194.el5.i686.rpm
iproute-2.6.18-11.el5.i386.rpm
libacl-2.2.39-6.el5.i386.rpm
less-436-2.el5.i386.rpm
kpartx-0.4.7-34.el5.i386.rpm
kernel-xen-2.6.18-194.el5.i686.rpm
libgcc-4.1.2-48.el5.i386.rpm
libsepol-1.15.2-3.el5.i386.rpm
libpcap-0.9.4-15.el5.i386.rpm
libstdc++-4.1.2-48.el5.i386.rpm
lvm2-2.02.56-8.el5.i386.rpm
module-init-tools-3.3-0.pre3.1.60.el5.i386.rpm
mod_ssl-2.2.3-43.el5.centos.i386.rpm
mkinitrd-5.1.19.6-61.i386.rpm
net-tools-1.60-81.el5.i386.rpm
nash-5.1.19.6-61.i386.rpm
openldap-2.3.43-12.el5.i386.rpm
newt-0.52.2-15.el5.i386.rpm
openssh-server-4.3p2-41.el5.i386.rpm
openssh-clients-4.3p2-41.el5.i386.rpm
openssh-4.3p2-41.el5.i386.rpm
php-gd-5.1.6-27.el5.i386.rpm
php-common-5.1.6-27.el5.i386.rpm
php-cli-5.1.6-27.el5.i386.rpm
php-5.1.6-27.el5.i386.rpm
policycoreutils-1.33.12-14.8.el5.i386.rpm
php-pdo-5.1.6-27.el5.i386.rpm
php-mysql-5.1.6-27.el5.i386.rpm
php-mbstring-5.1.6-27.el5.i386.rpm
rsyslog-3.22.1-3.el5.i386.rpm
procps-3.2.7-16.el5.i386.rpm
shadow-utils-4.0.17-15.el5.i386.rpm
selinux-policy-targeted-2.4.6-279.el5.noarch.rpm
selinux-policy-2.4.6-279.el5.noarch.rpm
tcpdump-3.9.4-15.el5.i386.rpm
tar-1.15.1-30.el5.i386.rpm
[root@buildhost-32 tmp]#
</pre>

==Screen Shots==
[[File:Test-webserver-1.png]]

[[File:Test-webserver-2.png]]

[[File:Test-webserver-3.png]]

[[File:Test-webserver-4.png]]

[[File:Test-webserver-5.png]]

==Download the ISO (418 MB)==

Version: 0.2

Built: 10 Jan 2011

Size: 418 MB

URL: http://downloads.wbitt.com/downloads/CentOS-5.5-i386-WebserverEdition-0.2.iso

Check the download directory for the MD5 and SHA1 checksums.

Why migrate from Windows to Linux? and How?

Kasim — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 05:06:14 GMT

Kasim:

Here is where we will provide all the reasoning as, why should you migrate away from windows to Linux?

===Further readings / References===
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software
* http://www.togaware.com/linux/survivor/Advocacy.html
* http://www.o3magazine.com/0/7.html
* http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html
* http://www.olocity.com/blogs/
* http://www.sadcpf.org/2009-guidelines_OSS_migration-v.03.pdf
* http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/ie_linux.html

Why migrate from Windows to Linux? and How?

Kasim — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 05:05:25 GMT

Kasim:

Here is where we will provide all the reasoning as, why should you migrate away from windows to Linux?

==Heading 2==
some text.

===Heading 3===
Some text.
* bullet item 1
* bullet item 2

# list item 1
# list item 2
## list item 2.1
# list item 3

===Further readings / References===
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software
* http://www.togaware.com/linux/survivor/Advocacy.html
* http://www.o3magazine.com/0/7.html
* http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html
* http://www.olocity.com/blogs/
* http://www.sadcpf.org/2009-guidelines_OSS_migration-v.03.pdf
* http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/ie_linux.html