Putting it all together

Create a directory to hold the files on your CD. Suppose this directory is $CDROOT.

Populate $CDROOT/{bin,man,lib} and any other directories you may want, to hold all your Linux utilities. In my case I have $CDROOT/python which has the python installation.
Populate $CDROOT/I386 and $CDROOT: Make sure you copy setup.exe and win* files from your Windows Install CD(s), to here. For example, for Win XP Professional SP1, you need win51,win51ip and win51ip.SP1 files. Then you may copy some files from the I386 directory from your Windows Install CD(s). If you only want the recovery console, then see winreccons, to see which files to copy. On the other hand, if you want to install Windows from the CD then you need to copy the entire I386 directory. If you want to be able to install multiple versions of windows from the CD, then dont copy all the I386 directories to $CDROOT/I386. Copy them to $CDROOT/$WINVERSION/I386 and then modify your winnt.exe invocation to reflect this change. If you also want user interactive installation to work, then you need to modify the $CDROOT/$WINVERSION/I386/winnt.sif file suitably.
Populate $CDROOT/isolinux: This is the most important of all. This should have isolinux.bin, isolinux.cfg, memdisk as well as all the floppy images, linux kernels, initrd images and the windows CD boot sector. If you decide to have a graphical splash screen (like RedHat Install CD), then this is where the .lss file goes.

Finally to burn the CD, use the command:

mkisofs -o $(ISOFILE) -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -J -r -N \
        -c isolinux/boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 \
        -boot-info-table $(CDROOT)

The J and r options enable Joliet and Rockridge extensions, the -N disables ISO file version numbers (this actually deviates from the ISO9660 standard, but you need this for Windows booting to work). While you are experimenting with this you will need to go through several iterations, so I suggest you use a makefile to automate this as well. Some of the options in my makefile are to:

iso: Create the iso image
rfs: Create the linux initrd image (root file system) and drop it inside $CDROOT
lib: Check that the initrd image, does not have unresolved shared library dependencies. Dont forget to chase symlinks.
makeld: Regenerate the ld.so.conf in the initrd file system
burn: Burn the iso to the CD
mfs,ufs: Mount and unmount the initrd file system (on a file) to a mountpoint, using loop back devices
cleaniso: delete the iso image
cleanrfs: delete the initrd image

ganapathy murali krishnan

Last modified: Tue Dec 3 19:31:49 CST 2002