CentOS and ISO Recorder

Yesterday, I covered creating a USB boot drive for CentOS. Today I will walk through making an .iso disc for CentOS using ISO Recorder.

Working with .iso is both easy and frustrating on Windows. Very often the software that comes with the computer is not up to the task. To solve this basic problem I suggest ISO Recorder. This software does not create a desktop icon or a selectable program in the Start/Windows menu; instead it adds options to the menu.

Time to get started. Download your .iso image and place all files in an easy to find directory. I am using CentOS which requires two DVDs. Insert a blank DVD and cancel out of any pop up box Windows 7 displays. Right click the desired .iso file. Select "Copy image to CD/DVD".

The burning software will open and display ISO Recorder on the left hand side of the screen. The Source should default to "Image File".

Click next.

Wait for the burn...

No seriously, wait and wait and wait. The status bar may hang out on 100% for a very long time. This is proportional to the amount of data on the disc. My first CentOS disc uses the whole DVD and took several minutes to complete. The second disc is relatively tiny and took only a moment.

Don't forget to label the discs. CentOS has a built in disc check in the install process, I would suggest using it on BOTH discs to avoid headaches.

**This post was moved from Pretendertothepower.com to Unpwnd.com.

Mint 11 lxde glitch - Can't delete uninstalled program icons from the menu

Mint 11 lxde is old, but I like it for my Asus EEE PC. It does have one annoying glitch. If you attempt to remove software such as gnumeric, the uninstall process leaves the program's icon in the menu. Annoying but not exactly critical.

There is an easy work around. Go to a convenient location and create a new folder called "deleted icons". Next open the /usr/share/applications folder. Go to tools and select "Open current folder as Root". This displays a new window. Find the offending software and select cut. Go to the deleted icons folder and again, select tools and open as "Open current folder as Root". Paste in the offending program and close all windows.

By shifting the icon via cut-paste, you retain the option of reinstalling the program.

Reblog - Tricky Unetbootin install – CentOS

This post originally appeared on Pretender to the Power on June 5, 2012.

Unetbootin is a wonderful piece of software. It will create a bootable USB drive of your favorite Linux flavor.

Well, most of the time.

CentOS is a special case. The files needed for CentOS* reside on mirrors and not the support website. So, Unetbootin cannot reach them. Obviously there are ways around this. The most obvious is to download the files from the mirror, but let us forget about planning and forethought, shall we?

Step one, download Unetbootin.

Step two, open it.

Select the desired flavor of Linux. Note: If you do not choose CentOS this is the wrong guide for you. Be 100% sure about your drive letter. This step can cause all sorts of file deletion and badness.

Now wait for the OS to download. There are no files on the CentOS website, so this will not take long.

The last step is to reboot. I would recommend against using your one and only computer for this. Take the USB drive to a different computer and boot that one.

The installer is very user friendly, so I will skip everything up to the ftp address. The installer requires two pieces of information: the ftp site name and the Red Hat Directory. The example of this data is from the University of Chicago.**

FTP site name: bay.uchicago.edu/centos/
The Red Hat Directory: /5/os/i386/

Select ok and watch the magic happen!

* CentOS does have the option for a live disc, however I have not found a way to install using those files. To be honest, I didn't try very hard.
**The FTP site listed has CentOS 2-6. Choose wisely.

The Random Wizard

Anyone who has DM’ed a campaign has partnered the characters with a random wizard to save their bacon if things go south.

I had no idea that Random Wizards existed in real life, but here’s one. His latest post brings back classic D&D modules with news on the latest offerings from RPGnow. 

(2024 Update - This website is long gone, but thanks to the Wayback Machine, you can still access some of the content.) 

The Wonders of Slovakia?

Earlier this month, my boys and I spent four days at Scout Haven Cub Scout camp in Freedom, NY. 

I haven’t posted on the camp itself, but the staff are really the heart and soul of this camp. Our guide, Barbara was participating in a worldwide scout exchange program. Barbara was visiting from Slovakia, a region with a long history of scouting. 

She spent hours talking with the boys about the differences between US and Slovakian scouting. We also received a brief linguistics review. “Lighting a match/fire” is a concept that did not compute to Barbara, but “strike a match” and “start a fire” did make sense. 

Not much is all that different, but when it is different it is wildly so. 

In Slovakia, tepees are used by leaders and camp staff while at Scout Haven the staff use cabins. Written materials are largely absent in Slovakia, with an oral tradition taking its place. Food is about the same except for lunch, but the quantities in the US are not surprisingly larger. Lunches tend to be soups and/or finger foods on the other side of the ocean. 

Barbara spent several hours with our pack as our guide/VIP, and enriched our understanding of scouting with her perspective. She and the other staff made our summer vacation absolutely wonderful, with camp-wide events.