You need a copy of the distribution on a writable disk which is accessible from the computer having the CD writer (duh!). If you want to incorporate the latest updates, this directory should (also) be accessible from from a Linux machine, either from a local disk, an NFS mounted disk on a different computer, or a JAZ disk.
You could copy the distribution from a RedHat CD, or you could get it via
FTP. If you choose to use FTP, the best way to get a correct copy of the
distribution is to use the mirror package.
Mirror is a sophisticated perl script that compares the content of a directory on a remote site with a local directory. It will use FTP to fetch the files that are on the remote site but not the local site, and delete files on the local site that are not on the remote site. The mirror program is configured with a configuration file. The mirror package is available as an RPM from rufus.w3.org.
Make your local copy mirror.redhat of the mirror configuration file, and
edit the relevant fields at the top of the file. After the default section,
define these packages:
package=updates
site=ftp.sunsite.auc.dk
exclude_patt=(alpha/|sparc/)
remote_dir=/disk1/ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/redhat-5.1/updates
local_dir=/jaz/redhat-5.1/updates
package=dist
site=ftp.sunsite.auc.dk
exclude_patt=(alpha/|sparc/)
remote_dir=/disk1/ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/redhat-5.1/i386
local_dir=/jaz/redhat-5.1/i386
The following command will download a copy of the entire RedHat tree on your local disk. *Think* before you do this, you are about to transfer approximately 350Mb of data.
mirror -pdist mirror.redhat
This will mirror the Red Hat FTP site on your local disk. The content of a
Red Hat distribution does not change between releases, so you only need to
download this package ONCE. All changes to the distribution are in the updates directory. Thus, if you want to keep an up-to-date mirror of the
Red Hat distribution, you only need to keep the updates directory
current. This is done using the command
mirror -pupdates mirror.redhat
You can run this regularly, say, once a week, through a cron script. The RedHat distribution is available on a great number of FTP servers around the world, which are updated daily from the master site at ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub. You should choose an FTP site close to you, see the RedHat FAQ