Setting up a kickstart boot-dvd

Solution 1:

In my opinion the hardest part of setting up a custom boot CD is getting the bootloader to function correctly from the CD after remaster.

To remaster the CD it is necessary to update some metadata for the isolinux setup. I think it is covered on either page 3 or 4 of Frank's link.

mkisofs -iso-level 4 -l -R -J -joliet-long -D -V "UBCD501" -o "../custom.iso" -b
  "isolinux/isolinux.bin" -c "isolinux/boot.catalog"  \
   -hide "isolinux/boot.catalog" -hide-joliet "isolinux/boot.catalog" 
   -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table .

Execute this from the top level folder containing the extracted contents of your CD.

On a related note I personally like to keep a dedicated local repository for my servers. It makes the updates process easier and it also provides a really convenient way to keep a set of kickstart files. I put a http reference for my kickstart file and load it off the server along with the latest versions of whatever packages I want to install. It is way faster than trying to run the updates after the fact.

NOTE - this works flawlessly for remastering RHEL / CentOS boxes. Haven't tested elsewhere.