[H-GEN] (customised) updated redhat install disks

[Tony Nugent]

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If anyone local here on the Gold Coast is interested in a set of
updated redhat 7.2 installation disks, and/or disks just with all
the updates for all the 5.2, 6.x and 7.x releases, then contact me
(I live near Bundall, 55268020, but preferably email as I might not
be available on that number for some of this coming week).

  Also, if anyone has the full two-disk set of 7.2 SRPMs (and the
  documentation disk, if it exists), I'l love to have a copy.

I'd bring some along to the meeting next Sat, but it clashes with
easter and lots of family things are happening... :(

However if someone here is going to the Sat meeting and others are
interested, then they could take along a set of these disks for
others to copy.

  (Most of them will need to be on 700Mb/80min CDs, not 650s.  Heh,
  the era of the DVD distribution has already dawned in Europe,
  they'll be here soon enough as standard... I believe they can hold
  ~4.7Gb of data on each side.  DVD/cdrom readers are under $200).

I could also prepare fully updated redhat 6.2 installer and
powertools disks if anyone wants that.

  (It's been a while since I've actually needed to install 6.2, but
  I still collect the updates as I need to maintain a number of 6.2
  boxes).

  BTW, an updated redhat 6.2 box is a very stable beast, until
  recently I had one busy 6.2 server up solid as a rock for 473 days
  before coming down for only hardware changes and (finally) a new
  kernel.

  Forget about making redhat 7.0 and 7.1 installers (although I have
  the updates).  In true x.2-release style, 7.2 is way, way better
  than the earlier 7.x's.  Pity they dropped powertools though.

These install disks have all the official redhat updates already in
it (current at mirror.aarnet.edu.au and/or ftp.planetmirror.com.au
at the time I prepare the images).  For example, it has the latest
kernel, perl, kde, tex, apache, php, openssh, ldap, glibc, gcc(3),
XFree86 and zlib (and more) fixes and upgrades.  The anaconda
installer updates are also automatically included.  (Believe me,
there are some tricks in creating workable customised / updated
redhat 7.x installation CDs :-)

  The current set of updates for redhat 7.2 comes to around 610Mb,
  just for the binary packages (really!)  The src.rpm's amount to
  another ~465Mb.  Similar story for previous releases... all the
  updates for rh6.2 (including powertools) come to ~730Mb.

  And none of this includes updates to updates (eg, ~100Mb per
  kernel update, there have been at least three for 7.2, heh,
  totally lost count for the other distros :)

These disks are very useful.  They save all the hassles involved
with having to obtain and then manually (and sometimes painfully)
apply all these updates to a fresh installation using the original
release installation disks.

Getting your hands on the original release distributions is easy,
but getting all the updates (and keeping them current) involves a
fair bit of effort -- and bandwidth.  Having them available on disk
is useful (that is until the next update becomes available to make
the disks obselete :-)

Cheers
Tony
---*#*=-=*#*=-=*#*=-=*#*=-=*#*=-=*#*=---
  Tony Nugent <Tony at linuxworks.com.au>
  LinuxWorks - Gold Coast Qld Australia

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