ISOs

[jon787]

How do I make an ISO file??

[bdg1983]

Could you please be a little little more specific.

Through Linux? Gnome, KDE others. Commanline cdrecord? XCDRoast and on and on.

Through Windows? CD Creator, Nero

Better to head over to www.linuxiso.org (http://www.linuxiso.org) and read all their docs on different platforms and applications.

Or do you mean, how do they make the iso? How do they create the filesystem, add files, make bootable etc.

[jon787]

Originally posted by mdwatts the 3rd:
<STRONG>Could you please be a little little more specific.

Or do you mean, how do they make the iso? How do they create the filesystem, add files, make bootable etc.</STRONG>
I mean how to make the actual ISO. burning one is really easy.

[Strike]

Yeah, mkisofs will actually create an ISO from a set of files, but most people just need to burn CDs, which mdwatts explained some starting points to look for.

[jon787]

Thanks. I was just wondering how they made ISOs.

[TacKat]

Making an ISO is like doing the burn process in reverse. The entire cd is read bit for bit and put into a file, whereis in a burn, the file is read bit for bit and put on a cd.

[Strike]

Originally posted by TacKat:
<STRONG>Making an ISO is like doing the burn process in reverse. The entire cd is read bit for bit and put into a file, whereis in a burn, the file is read bit for bit and put on a cd.</STRONG>
No, not really. Maybe image (.img) files are like that, but ISO9660 is a filesystem. As such, it has a structure and organization to it that isn't just a bit-for-bit copy of things. There are also extensions to it as well (like Joliet and RockRidge) that ensure that there are at least a few different ways of representing a filesystem with an ISO that are essentially equivalent. What mkisofs does (as you learn just by watching it run) is it scans all the files and makes sure that all the filenames and whatnot will conform to the ISO9660 filesystem standards. When they don't, depending on what extensions you may or may not have used and depending on what about the filename doesn't conform to the standards, it changes it to (hopefully) fix it transparently. Often this includes shortening the name and using some other method (TRANS.TBL is one, I think) to assure that it APPEARS to have the longer name, but really doesn't within the filesystem itself. Once all the filenames are cleared, it simply (essentially) builds a partition with that filesystem into a single file, just as if you were using something like mkreiserfs or mke2fs or mkswap. You can even mount this file (granted you have support for mounting loopback devices) as if it were a CD.

[fow99]

I don't knwo how to do that under Linux :(
But under Windows, I recommend BlindRead.