HOWTO: Use Linux to Slipstream SP3 into Windows XP iso

A co-worker of mine inspired me to create a new enterprise CD with SP3 pre-installed the other day after I asked about an existing iso I had found on our network. I wondered if it were OEM or a new volume license with SP3 I had hoped it was.

He sent me a few links to some howto’s and not all were the same. Looking over a few examples I quickly began replacing their Windows solutions with known Linux. Rather than recreate the wheel, I first searched how others have done it using Linux. These are a couple sites that have inspired my success:

• Slipstreaming Windows XP with Service Pack 3 in Linux by Jeremy Visser

• Slipstreaming Windows XP SP3 in Linux by Michael Gorven
• Intégration du Service Pack Windows sous Linux by Jacques Rouxel

The process is actually very easy but as usual ‘your mileage will vary’. I am using KDE 4.3.0 with Fedora 10.

1. Copy XP CD content into a clean working directory (/home/warren/software/VRMPVOL_EN/)

2. chmod -R 777 /home/warren/software/VRMPVOL_EN/
3. Convert everything to uppercase with convmv -r –upper –notest /home/warren/software/VRMPVOL_EN/. Don’t ask; who’d of thunk Microsoft was case sensitive!
4. Retrieve the redistributable SP3
5. Extract the service pack using cabextract -d /home/warren/software/SP3/ /home/warren/software/WindowsXP-KB936929-x86-ENU.exe
   
   

6. Install the service pack using wine /home/warren/software/SP3/i386/update/update.exe /integrate:D:\\home\\warren\\software\\VRMPVOL_EN_SP3.

   The D: is the wine drive letter I have my existing CD in. Run the wine configuration app and find the Drives tab.

7. Extract the boot loader from the original CD with ./geteltorito /dev/sr0 > /home/warren/software/VRMPVOL_EN_SP3/boot.bin.

   I didn’t have an rpm package for geteltorito so I got both files from the download page and chmod 755 to make it executable. I could only run this as root, so be sure to chown the boot.bin back to you.

8. Write the iso with mkisofs -b boot.bin -hide boot.bin -hide boot.catalog -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -iso-level 4 -relaxed-filenames -D -V VRMPVOL_EN_SP3 -o /home/warren/software/VRMPVOL_EN_SP3.iso ./home/warren/software/VRMPVOL_EN_SP3/
9. Burn iso to CD and test! I prefer K3b; just works.

So there you have your newly update XP CD with SP3 already installed. I tested and only created one coaster with a botched boot loader. This one boots and has a clean SP3.

Lead or Follow?

From The Love Dare:

… you must take the view that instead of following your heart, you are choosing to lead it. The world says to follow your heart, but if you are not leading it, then someone or something else is. The Bible says that “the heart is more deceitful than all else” (Jeremiah 17:9), and it will always pursue that which feels right at the moment.

My wife and I are taking the dare… The Love Dare. It will be a challenge I am reading, but I think it will be well worth enduring. I encourage you to do the same in your marriage.

Breathe in Eternity

Signed up for a couple classes at the church. One is Spirit-Filled Living. To make one thing clear about the belief our church has on the Holly Spirit: there are different camps of thought and a lot of Pentecostals tend to be the guilty party of, and that is establishing cliques of the “haves” and the “have nots”. Most are referring to the gift of tongues. Where our church (of Pentecostal roots) is different: we don’t these “have/not” people. We also recognize the many gifts from Holly Spirit; not just tongues. It’s not like we get to come to a buffet and choose from the gifts. In the same breath, we have the freedom to ask for them. I’m looking forward to learning a whole lot more on Spiritual Gifts in the weeks to come.

The other class I started last night is Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. This is based on the book of the same title by Peter Scazzero. I have only read the first chapter before the class started. I know there will be a lot of things to learn. So far some things are: understanding my emotions have played a big part of how I was spiritually. Peter says you can’t be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature.. Looking ahead to chapter 8: Discovering the Rhythms of the Daily Office and Sabbath. This caught my eye as it has to do with Stopping to Breathe the Air of Eternity. If we could only imagine, get a glimpse, taste the air of Heaven, then perhaps we would slow down and truly change our priorities

Another Beginning

Well here I am again attempting to start my blogging back up. Sort of a New Year’s commitment I guess. It’s just taken me this long now to get all my posts from my old MovableType blog.

Many things have happened in the past couple years since my writing. Mainly just a few job changes, trip to Germany, various counselings, ah… closer relationship to God, and back to martial arts. Shocking eh? Well perhaps I shall talk about some of these past things in the future, but I don’t want to waste time right now on the past.

Part of what I want to change about my blogging is going to be more spiritual. After compiling all my past blog posts from two sites, I have found much of my ramblings about the IT Crowd. Plan on seeing more from the SOAP category.

Ouch! Bad Sync

One of my favorite Firefox extensions I have been using for a year and a half is called Foxmarks. Foxmarks is a bookmark synchronizer that keeps your different Firefox installs all updated with the same set of bookmarks. For me there is nothing more frustrating than not having that one cool link you saved on your computer at home and for the life of me, can’t remember how or where I got it to begin with.

Thunderbird now plays well with Firefox

I had been a non-conformist in many ways with regard to installing my own tarball of Thunderbird and Firefox instead of using the packaged RPMs Fedora already built. I mainly did this because they are considered stable by Mozilla yet one version ahead of RPMs.

Late last year I had run into problems with my system dieing for various reasons and I had suspected Firefox. I knelt down and installed the RPM leaving the tarball version in place and changing my app links to point to the correct bin. Soon to follow was Thunderbird as well.

PowerShot S2 IS in Linux

I have a Canon S2 IS camera. It is a mid-level camera which I am happy with. In my resent family migration to full throttle Linux this past month; I have been the only one to have fired up XP one time to access pictures from this camera. Back in Fedora Core 6 and I think even up to resent kernel updates, I was able to mount my camera. The PowerShot S2 is not a mass storage device so you can’t just mount it to get the pictures. Instead it uses the Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP).

Evidently hotplug has been pretty much replaced by udev in modern Linux distros now. Up to now I only heard the term udev but had no idea old or new it was nor what it did. Once upon a time Linux used a static list of devices under /dev. Today everyone is connecting and disconnecting devices with USB, Firewire, and Bluetooth and static /dev alone just doesn’t cut it anymore. Dynamic udev to the rescue!

Wikipedia excerpt:

udev is the device manager for the Linux 2.6 kernel series. Its primary function is managing device nodes in /dev. It is the successor of devfs and hotplug, which means that it handles the /dev directory and all user space actions when adding/removing devices, including firmware load.

The Hell with HP

Last summer I had it with HP support. My first dealings with them proved to be successful back in 2006, but something terrible has happened since. My brother who lives in Oregon needed help with getting his HP PC up and running after it had been infested with “Internets”. I felt bad that I instructed him to to re-partition his box without checking with him first if he had his OEM cd’s. Okay… secretly I wanted to get him to use those LiveCD’s I sent him the year prior; just kidding, but that was what was left for him at that time.

So I ordered him his OEM CDs next day on a Friday in 2006. Naturally he doesn’t get them until Monday. All must have been well since; I don’t recall to be honest. He says he was able to get the box back to where it was without using the CD’s. A year later he has the same problem but the CD’s fail on the last CD. I suspect it is damaged, but he cannot continue. I call HP and ask for a new set to replace the defective CD’s.

An afternoon in Hell is what I spent on the phone trying to get to the right department. After countless pass-offs and a couple dropped calls, I finally get a native English speaking gal thinking I’m gonna get this one real soon now. But no she can’t find my original order of which I had the emails for still. Evidently they decided to just dump all previous orders from an older database without cross-referencing to the new.

ClamAV Upgrade Ritual

Following the usual ‘make uninstall’ prior to upgrading my clamav doesn’t always ensure I will have no further problems. Generally the next step after you ‘make install’ your new clamav. Then you want to run a ‘freshclam’. But here is where I constantly forget and am now documenting how I fix this LibClamAV Error:

Linux Migration – Day One

Day one cleared up all the FUD! Kids are happy, wife is happy, I’m happy. I really didn’t doubt the outcome. Am glad for it to have been received so well. It is key to get them to sit down and just use it.

My wife discovered her card games and much more. The kids have yet to discover any of the installed games; they just played on their Webkinz site. I finally sat down as well to look at a few of the bazillion games. I first got a little gitty when I saw Doom and how well it performed. It brought back memories of college days. I knew instantly how much better it is now compared to the 386/486 machines we originally played it on. Looking forward to Heritic the same way. I wonder if Decent is available?

I have a 3D graphics card but have yet to install the closed source driver. I need some pointers… Scott, you know what card I have… give me some tips! Will be sweet when I get Beryl going with this too!

I also took a peek at an emulator. Don’t recall the name, but apparently it only works with a select few games and providing you have the data files/CD. More for some older role playing games. Still interested in using wine or other suggested emulator.