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