[TriLUG] RH72 and consolidating boot image updates

[Joe Morris]

Right in the middle of getting 15 new linux systems up and running.
right now I use 2 floppies to get things up and running:  one disk with
latest bootnet.img and another disk with anaconda updates we must apply to
get around a bug.  We are using kickstart and an updated distribution to
perform the entire install.  We are working on a PXE or DHCP solution to
enhance things as well.  For now, I've got two floppies and it's annoying
while we do trial and error to get the config right before we kickstart
all 15 systems.

So, I get this bright idea to at least combine the bootnet.img with the
contents of disk 2 (anaconda patches and updates) onto a bootable cdrom.
Since my kickstart config still has the static IP info (yes, I know, we
don't have the DHCP setup yet and there are other issues), I want to keep
the kickstart file on a floppy.

I boot the cdrom and at the boot prompt I enter:

  linux updates ks=hd:fd0/newhost.ks

Boot process kicks in and asks me to insert the disk with the updates.  I
hit OK and it still keeps trying to looks for the updates on /dev/fd0.
How do I tell the install process that the updates are on the same cdrom
it just booted from?  Been trying to search for other parameters to pass
on to the kernel, but I'm not turning up anything yet.  It's been
frustrating with the way RH put out these separate patches to be packaged
on another disk with no way of incorporating them into the whole process.
Seems like I'm stick with updates always being on the floppy, but that
seems ridiculous.

_______________________________________________
Joe Morris, Web Systems Manager
Academic Technology and Networks
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill