Centos-3 on Xen
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Here are the commands I used to bootstrap a basic centos3 system. It is important to realize this bootstrapping was done on a centos3 system, so things like yum, rpm and so on worked as expected. I initially tried the same procedure on a debian box and it did not go so well.
In any case, the "it takes one to know one" cliche held true.
mkdir -p /tmp/buildroot cd /tmp/buildroot dd if=/dev/zero of=diskimage bs=1024k count=750 mkfs.ext3 diskimage diskimage is not a block special device. Proceed anyway? (y,n) y mkdir -p /mnt/disk mount -o loop diskimage /mnt/disk
Now we have a fresh, blank disk image (inside a file called diskimage), time to bootstrap the operating system into it.
wget ftp://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/centos/3.7/os/i386/RedHat/RPMS/centos-release-3-7.1.i386.rpm rpm --root /mnt/disk/ --initdb rpm --root /mnt/disk/ -ivh --nodeps centos-release-3-7.1.i386.rpm
The correct GPG keys must be installed - the "takes one to know one" rule applies here!
rpm --root /mnt/disk/ --import /usr/share/doc/centos-release-3/RPM-GPG-KEY rpm --root /mnt/disk/ --import /usr/share/doc/centos-release-3/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-3
Install the "Base" group of RPM packages using yum. This assumes your yum repo(s) are setup correctly.
yum --installroot=/mnt/disk/ -y groupinstall Base ... (filesystem, basesystem and setup are installed, then 267 addl. packages) ... Transaction(s) Complete
Make necessary devices
/dev/MAKEDEV -d /mnt/disk/dev console /dev/MAKEDEV -d /mnt/disk/dev null /dev/MAKEDEV -d /mnt/disk/dev zero /dev/MAKEDEV -d /mnt/disk/dev random
Setup /mnt/disk/etc/fstab as shown
/dev/sdb1 / ext3 errors=remount-ro 0 1 /dev/sdb2 none swap sw 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
Cleanup /lib/tls
mv /mnt/disk/lib/tls /mnt/disk/lib/tls.disabled
Unmount and finish
umount /mnt/disk
Now diskimage is ready to use!
Actual space used= 528344