432 Technique 56: Burning CD-Rs without Getting Burned

Making Fedora Distribution CDs

Sure you can download RPM packages off the Web whenever you need them, but it’s a whole lot easier (and quicker) to have your own set of distribution CDs, handy and ready for use. You no longer have to search Web sites for the packages (hundreds of them exist) that are included with your distribution — just pop in the CD and unpack.

In this example, we walk you through downloading and burning a set of distribution media for Fedora Linux. The process is the same for SuSE or Mandrake — just download and substitute the ISO images from the distribution of your choice.

Downloading the ISO images

To download the ISO images to make your own set of Fedora discs, follow these steps:

1. Open your browser window and browse to

fedora.redhat.com/download/

2. Click the Download the Files You Need link.

3. Click the link to the ISO images.

An ISO image is like a snapshot of the data on a disc. The image contains not only the files on the disc, but the structure of the file system as well.

On the download page, you see links for SRPMS disc images (source RPMs) and i386 disc images. The ready-to-run RPM packages are on the i386 disc images.

4. Click the link to download

yarrow-i386-disc1.iso

A pop-up window appears asking if you want to open the file or save it to disk (see Figure 56-1).

•Figure 56-1: The Question dialog.

5.Click the Save As button.

6.When the Save As window opens, as shown in Figure 56-2, click the Save button.

• Figure 56-2: The Save As window.

The download begins. Even with a fast connection, the download takes a while.

7. When the download for the first disc completes, repeat the download process for disc 2, and disc 3, collecting the three ISO images.

yarrow-i386-disc2.iso yarrow-i386-disc3.iso

After you’ve downloaded the three ISO images, you need to verify the checksums to make sure you have a clean download. The next section explains how to do this.