How to create a Fedora install ISO for testing

This page will show 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.

Superuser privileges required
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.

Get Rawhide (optional)

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.

Make a DVD image

1. You must be running Rawhide, or use mock to continue. 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 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</li>
   <li>Make the DVD image:
   <pre>pungi --nosource --nosplitmedia --nodebuginfo --all-stages -c rawhide-fedora.ks

Making your DVD image match a release candidate

If there's already a release candidate available through the staging site, you can use rsync to "upgrade" your DVD image.

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 20090323/x86_64/iso
   mv Fedora-20090323-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 .