How to Make a Debian Rescue CD from Windows
Someone asked about making Debian CD's from Windows. Here's how I've
been doing it;
Create an archive on your Windows machine, for example c:\debian_cd
Copy the 2880K rescue image (from disks-i386/2.2.4-2000-01-03/disks-2.88
in the master archive) to c:\debian_cd
Copy drivers.tgz, disks-1.44/rescue.bin, and base2_2.tgz (from
disks-i386/2.2.4-2000-01-03 in the master archive) to
c:\debian_cd\debian\dists\potato\main\disks-i386\current
Create another directory for the .deb's, for example
c:\debian_cd\archive
Copy all of the .deb's for the packages you want to
c:\debian_cd\archive You may already have them available from
/var/cache/apt/archives if you haven't cleaned it out.
Create a template using your Windows CD software. Set the CD's root to
mirror c:\debian_cd. Add bootcatx.bin from the following utility to the
CD root first. http://annex.com/craig/archive/mkbtcd102.zip
Create the ISO image using your Windows CD software. Be sure to set the
file system to ISO9660 with Rockridge extensions (long file names).
Mode 1 seems to work best.
Use the mkbootcd utility to make the image bootable. Here is a usage
example for mkbootcd.exe;
mkbootcd cdimage.iso bootcatx.bin rescue.bin
Typing mkbootcd without any command line parameters will display a help
screen
Create the CD using your Windows CD software.
Boot and load the system with the CD you just made. Prior to using the
apt-get method, mount the CD and copy the contents of /archive to
/var/cache/apt/archives
You can make fresh CD's periodically to minimize the number of downloads
and upgrades after install.
One handy feature of dpkg is
dpkg --set-selections < selections
where "selections" is an ascii file listing user desired selections.
The format can be seen by using dpkg --get-selections. An install script
could look like this;
echo "apt apt" >/var/lib/dpkg/cmethopt
echo "deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian potato main contrib non-free"
>/etc/apt/sources.list
dpkg --clear-avail
dselect update
dpkg --set-selections < ./selections
dselect install
--
Craig H. Block, Debian user
Debian GNU/Linux potato
Linux 2.2.13 SMP i686
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