Keeping RedHat ISO images up to date.

From time to time security loopholes and other bugs are found in software. The software found in Red Hat Linux is no exception. While there are many ways to update an already installed system (including manually applying bug fixes, installing updated RPM packages, or using Red Hat's up2date or Ximian's Red Carpet utility), it's frustrating to have to immediately update a freshly installed system. So why not installl from CD's that already have all the bugfixes and security patches applied? Sounds good, right? Sure it does. But the ISO images you download from Red Hat mirrors don't have these things, they're copies of the original release. So we have to update the ISO images ourselves before we burn the CD's.

How do I do that?

Basically, you have to unpack the iso images, replace the stale packages with the new patched packages, and repack the CD's. Not a terribly difficult process, but there are some catches. Red Hat's installer program is going to be looking for the old packages unless we tell it about the new ones, and the installer program also helpfully checks the media for defects before beginning the installation process, so we have to make sure that the right checksums are implanted into iso headers. Remembering how to do all of this can be a bit tricky, so KPLUG has put together a little shell script to do it all for you.

Cool. How do I use it?

Create a directory on a filesystem with lots of room. Lots of room. We're talking close to 4 gigs of data. Either copy the first three iso images into that directory, or download them from you favorite Red Hat mirror. They should be named "psyche-i386-disc[n].iso", where [n] is replaced by the iso or CD number. Put this script in that directory.
Change to that directory, and execute the script. You'll get new copies of the ISO images. You can tell them from the old images because the date in YYYYMMDD format will be prepended to the iso image name.

Now just burn your new CD's, and install away.

Last Edited: Monday 02 December, 2002

This page designed and maintained by the KPLUG webmaster
webmaster@kplug.org