Re: CD images, ISO

From: Rod Smith (rodsmith_at_nessus.rodsbooks.com)
Date: 10/25/04 

Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2004 21:41:24 -0000

In article <10nauqnmnkt6g35@corp.supernews.com>,
        Keith Krehbiel <redsilo@pldi.net> writes:
>
> Rod Smith wrote:
>> In article <10n8qd231kbkg46@corp.supernews.com>,
>> Keith Krehbiel <redsilo@pldi.net> writes:
>>
>>>I have scratched the first CD in my set to the point where it is mostly
>>>unuseable for installation. I downloaded an image that I am reasonable
>>>certain would be a replacement for the one I ruined. When I try to
>>>extract the image to copy the files and burn a new CD
>>
>> Don't try it that way. Download the image file and burn it straight to
>> CD-R *AS AN IMAGE FILE* (that is, do *NOT* burn a CD with a single big
>> file). You can do this directly with cdrecord, or most GUI CD-R tools have
>> an option to burn a CD-R from an image file. If you need more help on
>> this, post with information on the CD-R software you're using.
>>
> Actually burning a single big file was about the only option I had not
> tried. The file I have downloaded has a garbage title and a generic
> icon but Disk Copy will open it and create an image. The problem is
> that all the files and folders in the image are named to ISO standards
> rather than something that Linux would understand.

The CD-R image file is a complete ISO-9660 filesystem in a single file.
The Disk Copy tool just accesses that filesystem the way a Mac normally
does, except from the file rather than from an actual CD-ROM. The
filesystem image is almost certainly ISO-9660 with Rock Ridge extensions,
which means that it *DOES* have long filenames, but they're encoded via
Rock Ridge, which pre-X versions of MacOS can't understand. (Mac disc
images will be either HFS or ISO-9660 plus HFS, so Macs will see HFS long
filenames.) All of this is irrelevant once the CD-R is created correctly,
because what you should do is find a way to burn the image to disc
without adding it in a wrapper filesystem. That is, the usual way to
create a CD-R is to take files from a disk directory, wrap them in an
ISO-9660 filesystem (often plus other options), and write that created
filesystem to the CD-R. What you want to do is to write the file to disc
*WITHOUT* first wrapping it in an ISO-9660 filesystem, because the image
file *IS* an ISO-9660 filesystem.

> I tried just now to create an
> image from the file with my burner software (Discribe) and it wouldn't
> read the file. Thanks for your suggestion though.

I'm afraid I'm not familiar with Discribe, so I can't tell you precisely
how to do what's needed with it, or even if it's possible -- it's
conceivable that Discribe is crippled and lacks the necessary option. Look
for something called "burn from image file," "create CD-R from ISO image,"
or something similar. You don't want to *CREATE* an image file -- you've
already got one. You want to COPY that existing image file to disc.

If Discribe is so crippled that it won't do what you need, you might look
into other software. I'm not familiar with MacOS options, so I can't point
you to specific products, but there's got to be something that'll do the
job. If you've already installed Linux and can access the file from Linux,
just use cdrecord to burn the image file to CD-R from Linux.

> The real filenames
> are saved in each directory in a file called TABLE, something or
> another.

This is a common practice when using certain Unix/Linux CD-R creation
tools. Placing the long filenames in a special files enables users of OSs
that can't read them to figure out what's what. You can and should ignore
this detail, along with everything you see when accessing the file with
Disk Copy, because using Disk Copy as any part of this process is the
wrong approach -- or at the very least, it's the way-too-hard approach.

> Seems like there should be some way to reconstruct it.

In theory, yes. Reconstruction is the wrong approach, though; it's like
trying to pick all the toppings off of a pizza to make a sandwich from
them, when a sandwich just like the one you want to make is sitting right
next to the pizza. Only multiply that by a thousandfold. ;-) 

-- 
Rod Smith, rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
http://www.rodsbooks.com
Author of books on Linux, FreeBSD, and networking

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