CentOS Readme

CentOS ISO Directory
--------------------

There are several possible files within each ISO directory.

1. ISO files {end in .iso} - These files are the images themselves.  You
would burn these files as an image, once downloaded, to use to install
CentOS. See this documentation on how to burn ISO files to disc:

http://linuxiso.org/viewdoc.php/howtoburn.html

2. Torrent files {end in .torrent} - Torrent files will allow you to
download the CD using Bittorrent. This is the only way to get ISOs from
the mirror.centos.org servers.  If you are using CentOS, you can get the
latest el3 (for CentOS-3) or the el4 (for CentOS-4) version of bittorrent
from Dag Wieer's repository:

http://dag.wieers.com/packages/bittorrent/

Other OS users can get the latest bittorrent client from:

http://www.bittorrent.com/

3.  MD5 files - Other files that are available are the MD5 sums of the iso
files in the directory.  You can check the md5 sum of the file on your PC
to ensure it was transfered properly to your computer and that none of the
bits were scrambled, dropped, etc.  See this guide for checking the md5 sum
of an ISO:

http://linuxiso.org/viewdoc.php/verifyiso.html

----------------
Single Server CD
----------------

The Single Server CD is an ISO that contains most of the items required for
basic server setup (without a GUI) on a single CD.  This was created for
those who want to download 1 CD and be able to do a functional install.

Obviously, we can't fit everything from the 4 CD set onto 1 CD, but we may
not have the packages JUST right.  We welcome feedback to the packages
included in the Single Server CD, so if you need something not there, let
us know.  The best way to provide feedback to the CentOS developers is via
the CentOS-Devel mailing list:

http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos-devel

Once you use the Single Server CD to install, you can use yum or up2date to
add programs that you might need, and it functions just like any other
CentOS install.

Especially good is the "yum groupinstall" feature.  See this link for more
help with using yum:

http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/docs/html/yum/

--------------
Full Arch CD's
--------------
There are a number of CD's that contain the full install for an architecture
(ARCH).  There are normally 3 or 4 CD's and they are numbered as either:

CentOS-4.2-x86_64-bin1of4.iso
------------------^^^^^^^----

or like this:

CentOS-3.6-x86_64-disc1.iso
------------------^^^^^----

These CDs are the RPMS that need to be installed and the first disc is
bootable to do the install.

-----
DVD's
-----
DVD's are normally available for each version, but the ISO files are not
normally included in the ISO directory.  You can download the CentOS DVD's
via bittorrent.  This is because of the following reasons:

1.  Files greater than 2 GB are not served properly buy the default apache
included in CentOS (and many other distros), so external (public) CentOS
mirrors would end up with large files that they could not serve taking up
space on thier servers.

2.  Including all DVDs in the mirror would increase the size of the CentOS
mirror by 50% (it would be 1.5 x current).  As we continue to release new
arches and support for new versions, this would cause the size of CentOS
to become to large; reducing the number of people who could mirror it for
us externally.

-----------------------------------------
Other Important Links:
-----------------------------------------

CentOS 4 Docs:
http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/docs/

CentOS 3 Docs:
http://mirror.centos.org/centos/3/docs/

CentOS External Public Mirrors:
http://www.centos.org/mirrors