Hi all, 1. Forgive the signature below and do not throw me off this list please! Corporate compulsion, you know. Beyond my powers.. 2. Hopefully I am not violating any law here. The mail is long - but could be a great help - and not only to me, so please help. I mirrored the i386 part of ftp.suse.com on to a machine here and now HTTP based installs go through in a jiffy. Fine! Installed on machines here and things went great. Now the evil lurked ! Why not try and burn a custom CD for myself? One that I could use to bring my system up without having to bring my machine to the network? So I tried and screwed up my one writable CD today. Facts that I noticed : Largely based on observations from 6.3 1. The file :.S.u.S.E.something is one thing that probably gives a CD it's name. [Looked at CD from 6.3 that I bought, and a list-member confirmed the same from his owned CD set about 8.0] [So one would need to put an exact copy of this file in the root directory - check#1] 2. ARCHIVES.gz in the root directory of CD contains listing of the packages inside the medium. For FTP tree, a line typically is- ./suse/a1/db-4.0.14-84.i386.rpm: drwxr-xr-x root <newline> root 4096 Nov 18 2001 /usr/share/doc/packages/db/images While on 6.3 CD-1, the same line is- ./CD1/suse/a1/aaa_base.rpm: lrwxrwxrwx root <newline> root 7 Nov 10 20:27 /sbin/init.d/rc3.d/K19nscd -> ../nscd For CD, it contains the CD's contents while for FTP tree, it means contains the whole distribution. To construct this file manually would be painful - while replacing "./suse" by "./CD1/suse" would be a one line sed job. So for a customized CD, one would create the tree one wants, keeping the packages' dependencies in mind and then tinker with file. May be keep the whole tree's description files in it. I believe this file is read for package-descriptions and hence is harmless so long as you are selecting packages out of only the ones that you have chosen. So this file can be manufactured. But could be completely unimportant. 3. INDEX.gz looks like output of "$find . 2>/dev/null" for the CD1 but - a BIG BUT here, the typical line is CD1/dosutils/exceed/5EXCNLS.CPX for the CD where CD1 is a NON_EXISTENT directory on CD1 [6.3] 4. The directory "contents" on the CD's root directory, contains descriptions by packages' short names. These seem to be the actual description files in 6.3. I do not have 8.1 CD so can not comment whether it is there... Can someone tell me? 5. The directory suse/setup/descr contains descriptions of package selections - the pre-manufactured systems [Like SuSE Minimal system]. The files *.sel seem to be the files to tinker with to define the custom.sel of your own, or may be just to alter an existing Gnome.sel to play it safer. Just make sure that all the packages mentioned here are in the tree you constructed. And make sure that the files MD5SUMS in all directories do NOT contain entries for the files that are not there. I need a couple of things to complete my analysis... 1. Output of "find ." in CD1 of SL 8.0. gzipped. 2. Contents of INDEX.gz and ARCHIVS.gz and .S.u.S.E* files from all CDs. Please mail me these things if you can. 3. Hints from those who know more about it - whether there are checksums involved. and then I would know the correct questions to ask. In India, in the era of low bandwidth from home [2-3 kbps over dial up connection], this thing could be useful one written to a CD. Please help me carry it out. Rohit ********************************************************* Disclaimer This message (including any attachments) contains confidential information intended for a specific individual and purpose, and is protected by law. If you are not the intended recipient, you should delete this message and are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, or distribution of this message, or the taking of any action based on it, is strictly prohibited. ********************************************************* Visit us at http://www.mahindrabt.com