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.

Who the fdisk?

Found another cool time saver tip. For me I find myself looking for partition mount points. So I usually do:

fdisk /dev/hda

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 4982.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/hda: 40.9 GB, 40982151168 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4982 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 14 523 4096575 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 524 778 2048287+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 779 4982 33768630 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 779 909 1052226 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda6 910 4982 32716341 8e Linux LVM

I would do this for all drives, or if I didn’t know what device, I could run through the alphabet. Most recently I was searching for a USB thumb drive I just plugged in. So here is my time saver tip just learned today:

fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 40.9 GB, 40982151168 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4982 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 14 523 4096575 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 524 778 2048287+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 779 4982 33768630 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 779 909 1052226 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda6 910 4982 32716341 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/hdb: 30.0 GB, 30000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3647 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 3647 29294496 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/hdc: 20.4 GB, 20409532416 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 39546 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 1 39546 19931152+ 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/hdd: 22.5 GB, 22527590400 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2738 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdd1 * 1 2738 21992953+ 8e Linux LVM

Looky looky, all my drives that make up my boxtop backup server. Will have to post the pic of that here soon.

Installing Perl Modules the CPAN Way

I have done this many times following various instructions when installing perl modules but for the most part they all tell you to:

download > extract > cd into extracted dir
perl Makefile.PL
make
make install

I remember there was an easier way that went out and fulfilled all dependencies but I could never remember because I just followed the README file. Today I read a post where at least a couple folks gave the same instructions I recalled using:

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install modulename

Much easier!

UPDATE:
Another poster made another good suggestion of keeping with RPMs. Once you have exhausted your means to find an RPM of the module by using existing repositories either stock for most popular or repos like dag for other minor modules. If you then didn’t find your module there and want to continue with RPM you could use cpanflute2 to convert from the CPAN tar files into RPMs. It’s in the perl-RPM-Specfile package, which you should be able to install via yum.. However I have not used this and rarely find myself insisting on RPM’s in every situation. The only service I see this providing is a quick clean removal if necessary.