Making Bootable Cisco ISO Images

The Cisco Unified Communications Manager ISO on the Cisco Downloads Portal is not bootable; to get a bootable ISO you have to reach out to TAC. Here’s how to make it bootable.

Note: This has been tested on UCM 15.0.1 and IM&P 15.0.1.

1. Create some tempoary directories to mount the ISO: mkdir -p /tmp/cucm/iso_mount /tmp/cucm/iso_extract
2. Mount the ISO: sudo mount -o loop,ro <ISO> /tmp/cucm/iso_mount
3. Copy the contents over so we can modify them: rsync -a /tmp/cucm/iso_mount/ /tmp/cucm/iso_extract/ && cd /tmp/cucm/iso_extract
4. (Bonus) Modify the hardware scripts to allow running on KVM: Edit Cisco/install/conf/callmanager_product.conf

On the line containing NOT, *,*,*… replace NOT with VAL.

Note: IM&P uses cups_product.conf and has a sneaky NOT * a few lines above VAL * that needs replacing.

1. Recreate the ISO making it bootable:

   genisoimage -r -J -joliet-long -V "CDROM" -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -output ~/OUTPUT.iso /tmp/cucm/iso_extract/
   

   Note: The volume must be “CDROM” as the installer looks for the files in /dev/disk/by-label/CDROM.

2. Recalculate the md5 checksum:

   implantisomd5 --force ~/OUTPUT.iso
   

Now you have an ISO that can be booted and installed on any platform.

I’ve noticed that the installer will consume at least 20gig of RAM if given; I think there might be a memory leak…