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Chapter 2. Making Media

2.1. Making an installation DVD
2.2. Preparing a USB flash drive as an installation source
2.3. Making Minimal Boot Media
2.3.1. UEFI-based systems
Use the methods described in this section to create the following types of installation and boot media:
The following table indicates the types of boot and installation media available for different architectures and notes the image file that you need to produce the media.
Table 2.1. Boot and installation media
Architecture Installation DVD Installation USB flash drive Boot CD or boot DVD Boot USB flash drive
BIOS-based 32-bit x86 x86 DVD ISO image file x86 DVD ISO image file boot.iso boot.iso
UEFI-based 32-bit x86 Not available
BIOS-based AMD64 and Intel 64 x86_64 DVD ISO image file (to install 64-bit operating system) or x86 DVD ISO image file (to install 32-bit operating system) x86_64 DVD ISO image file (to install 64-bit operating system) or x86 DVD ISO image file (to install 32-bit operating system) boot.iso boot.iso
UEFI-based AMD64 and Intel 64 x86_64 DVD ISO image file Not available Not available efiboot.img (from x86_64 DVD ISO image file)
POWER (64-bit only) ppc DVD ISO image file Not available boot.iso Not available
System z s390 DVD ISO image file Not available Not available Not available

2.1. Making an installation DVD

You can make an installation DVD using the CD or DVD burning software on your computer.
The exact series of steps that produces a DVD from an ISO image file varies greatly from computer to computer, depending on the operating system and disc burning software installed. Use this procedure as a general guide. You might be able to omit certain steps on your computer, or might have to perform some of the steps in a different order from the order described here.
Make sure that your disc burning software is capable of burning discs from image files. Although this is true of most disc burning software, exceptions exist.
In particular, note that the disc burning feature built into Windows XP and Windows Vista cannot burn DVDs; and that earlier Windows operating systems did not have any disc burning capability installed by default at all. Therefore, if your computer has a Windows operating system prior to Windows 7 installed on it, you need a separate piece of software for this task. Examples of popular disc burning software for Windows that you might already have on your computer include Nero Burning ROM and Roxio Creator.
Most widely used disc burning software for Linux, such as Brasero and K3b has the built-in ability to burn discs from ISO image files.
  1. Download an ISO image file of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 installation DVD as described in Chapter 1, Obtaining Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
  2. Insert a blank, writeable DVD into your computer's DVD burner. On some computers, a window opens and displays various options when you insert the disc. If you see a window like this, look for an option to launch your chosen disc burning program. If you do not see an option like this, close the window and launch the program manually.
  3. Launch your disc burning program. On some computers, you can do this by right-clicking (or control-clicking) on the image file and selecting a menu option with a label like Copy image to DVD, or Copy CD or DVD image. Other computers might provide you with a menu option to launch your chosen disc burning program, either directly or with an option like Open With. If none of these options are available on your computer, launch the program from an icon on your desktop, in a menu of applications such as the Start menu on Windows operating systems.
  4. In your disc burning program, select the option to burn a disc from an image file. For example, in Brasero, this option is called Burn image.
    Note that you can skip this step when using certain disc burning software.
  5. Browse to the ISO image file that you downloaded previously and select it for burning.
  6. Click the button that starts the burning process.
On some computers, the option to burn a disc from an ISO file is integrated into a context menu in the file browser. For example, when you right-click an ISO file on a computer with a Linux or UNIX operating system that runs the GNOME desktop, the Nautilus file browser presents you with the option to Write to disk.