How to create a Fedora install ISO for testing

This page shows you how to build an ISO of Rawhide that you can use for testing.

Testing pre-releases
There are specific sections below that show how to get a DVD that matches the version being used by the QA group for testing Fedora pre-releases.

The rest of this tutorial requires that you open a root shell. Open a terminal and run the command su -, and provide the root password.

Making a local copy of Rawhide

Optional
This section is optional. You can use a nearby official Fedora mirror over a broadband connection. However, you may find it useful to mirror Rawhide locally if you regularly participate in testing. Note that the mirrormanager package may be useful in some situations. Refer to the detailed MirrorManager page for more information.

If you don't have Rawhide available on a fast, local link, you may want to mirror it locally using rsync.

mkdir -p /var/www/fedora/linux/development/x86_64/os
cd /var/www/fedora/linux/development/x86_64/os
rsync -Pavy --delete-after <MIRROR_NEAR_YOU>::fedora-linux-development/x86_64/os .

Note that these commands assume you are interested in testing the x86_64 (64-bit) architecture. Substitute i386 as needed for 32-bit architecture.

Testing Rawhide

This section shows the procedure to make a DVD-sized ISO image from the Rawhide repository.

1. You must be running Rawhide, or use mock to continue. Refer to the Pungi documentation for more information. One easy way to proceed, since you presumably have a Rawhide mirror available (see above), is to install Rawhide in a virtual guest machine.
2. You can use the same tools that Fedora Release Engineering uses to make a DVD. First, install the pungi package.

   yum install pungi

3. Change directory to an area with gobs of free space. Use the df -h command to find a location if needed.

   cd /tmp

4. Download the current kickstart file for Rawhide.

   curl -o rawhide-fedora.ks http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/pungi.git?p=pungi.git;a=blob_plain;f=share/rawhide-fedora.ks;hb=HEAD

5. Edit the repo commands in the rawhide-fedora.ks file to point at your local mirror, if needed. If the mirror is on your hard disk as above, for example, use this command in the kickstart file:

   repo --name=rawhide --baseurl=file:///var/www/fedora/linux/development/$basearch/os

   If you do not make these changes, the packages for Rawhide will be downloaded from a nearby official Fedora mirror. Note that this could take several hours even on a fast broadband connection.
6. Make the DVD image:

   pungi --nosource --nosplitmedia --nodebuginfo --all-stages -c rawhide-fedora.ks

Testing a release candidate

Special release candidates are made available through the alt.fedoraproject.org staging site. You can simply download a release candidate from this site, although the transfer speed generally means you must wait several hours for an ISO image.

However, if you've already built a DVD ISO image from Rawhide, and Rawhide is reasonably close to the state of the release candidate, you can use rsync to "upgrade" your Rawhide DVD ISO image to the release candidate. The resulting DVD ISO image can be verified as identical using the sha256sum command.

1. Get the official file name of the DVD from the mirror. Note the directory location and the file name.
2. Rename your DVD ISO image to the same name as the official file.

   cd 20090325/x86_64/iso
   mv Fedora-20090325-x86_64-DVD.iso Fedora-11-Beta-x86_64-DVD.iso

3. Use rsync to download the required bits to match your DVD to the original. The switches below deliver stats as you download, and effectively minimize the amount of downloading. Note that the location shown is an example only.

   rsync -Pavy alt.fedoraproject.org::alt/stage/11-Beta.rc3/Fedora-11-Beta-x86_64-DVD/Fedora-11-Beta-x86_64-DVD.iso .

4. Use sha256sum to test the image for integrity. The resulting checksum should be identical to that shown in the *CHECKSUM file that accompanies the image on the staging site.

   sha256sum Fedora-11-Beta-x86_64-DVD.iso