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GMorris
10-01-2001, 10:33 AM
Hello, all,

Recently I downloaded RedHat Linux 7.1. With a cable modem it takes about a day to get all 4 .iso files. My CD burner stopped burning, so I can't make the CD's. However, Linux will install fine from the iso files if you tell it where they reside (and you need a big hard drive to accomodate them!). After installation, you can get to the contents of the files and install things you missed on the first go-round, if needed. The mount command I found was:

mount -o loop -t iso9660 <filename.iso> </mnt/dir>

This works, and I might add, it works fine. You can look through the files just as if they were a drive, extract them with cp, etc. Where I run into a problem is trying to CHANGE or ADD any files to the .iso. No matter what I do to the mount command itself, there is no write access even for root. Now, I would like to add or change certain files within the .iso file, or just cp the whole thing to a regular drive, and re-compile it to an .iso file with my changes/additions. Any gurus out there that can help with this? I tried extracting the files and installing like that, but the linux install didn't like that too much, and demanded the intact .iso files. Possibly, there is a parameter that I could pass to the install program or something? I really don't know what else to do at this point and am open to suggestions! Thanks,

Gary Morris
gmorris61@carolina.rr.com

furrycat
10-02-2001, 10:39 PM
You can't add files to ISO images. They are supposed to be static images ready for burning to CD after all.

I'm pretty sure you can just extract the files from your loopback image to a directory somewhere and get Red Hat to install from a local harddrive. You used to be able to in any case.

If you really really want to add files to the ISO image, and you accept that this will probably make them too big to fit on a CD at some point, you must first extract all the files somewhere and then run mkisofs in the directory where you extracted them.

Better read the manpage for mkisofs, it has a whole load of options. Useful ones are -r for Rock Ridge extensions, -J for Joliet, -o to specify the output filename (good idea), -b and -c to set the boot image, if any (see the CDWRITING-HOWTO) and -V to set the CD image's volume name.