Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 14:08:15 +0100 From: Paul Howarth <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxx> By "cd based distro" s/he means a single-CD distribution (e.g. Knoppix), that you can boot into straight off CD *without needing to install it*. You could then burn your DVD image using that. Given that you've already downloaded the DVD, downloading a single Knoppix CD ISO would be quicker than downloading the multiple CD ISOs you'd need to install Fedora.
Actually, I haven't downloaded the FC3 DVD yet, because I ran into trouble on FC2. The Knoppix approach doesn't seem significantly easier to me than burning four CDs.
Download time is irrelevant, since it takes the same amount of time to download the same amount of data, be it CD or DVD. Burning time is smaller with DVD, assuming no errors, since it eliminates the overhead of setting up three more burns. However, it's not a significant difference, at least not worse than the extra step of downloading, burning and booting to Knoppix.
An alternative approach, if you have any existing Linux boxes available to you on a network (again, a Knoppix CD might suffice for this), would be to loopback mount the DVD ISO there and export it via NFS, and then do an NFS install. There's a small boot.iso file in the images/ directory of the DVD that you can burn to CD and use to boot into the installer.
Paul.
So I burn two CDs and one DVD instead of four CDs, plus add the overhead of figuring out loopback and NFS and how they interact, assuming, of course, I boot my Windows machine to Knoppix and set up NFS from there. All that takes extra time in setup and understanding, but I don't see a huge benefit. Why use two Unices?
I don't think I want to be that Rube Goldberg about it. When I want to burn from Linux, I'll use Fedora for the burn, after moving the burner to that box. (Does cdrecord do DVDs?) So I sacrifice Windows access to the burner (at least, until I master Samba).
The ideas folks sent have been most interesting, and I really am grateful for them. They just smack of "going around Jericho's barn" to get what I want.
Most useful, of course, were the answers to the original question as asked - those that pointed me to Windows software for burning > 2 GB DVDs.
