bug+fix: isolinux, mkisofs - added one directory to the CD => won't boot

From: Frantisek Rysanek (Frantisek.Rysanek_at_post.cz)
Date: 03/30/05

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    Date: 30 Mar 2005 02:14:30 -0800

    Dear Everyone,

    I'm writing this message merely to publish this information somewhere
    visible, so that others can find it when debugging a linux-based
    bootable CD compilation setup...

    For many months now, I've been using cdrtools 2.0 with isolinux 2.04
    to create bootable Linux CD's. I know there are newer versions of both
    available, but I follow the premise that "if it ain't broke, don't fix
    it".

    Yesterday I added one more directory (with two files) to my CD
    prototype directory and the resulting CD failed to boot.

    Some BIOSes would hang while probing the CD-ROM for bootable media,
    other BIOSes would just say "NO OPERATING SYSTEM FOUND". Only an old
    Compaq Presario notebook with a brand new slim Sony burner would boot
    off the impaired CD.

    I immediately suspected that the heavily abused RW media gave up, or
    that my venerable burner was gone. Then I suspected the CD-ROM where I
    was trying to boot, then the BIOS. I tried about four different
    burners and four different CD-ROM drives in three different computers,
    with old and fresh writeable and re-writeable media, I even explicitly
    fsck'ed my hard drive (Ext3), before I started to look at the
    prototype filesystem and the tools I was using.

    Unsurprisingly, nothing changed in my burning setup - except for the
    addition of two more files (and a 1st-level directory) to the CD
    prototype directory.
    I repeatedly invoked and removed the problem by adding and removing
    this latest addition.

    Amazing as it may sound, I managed to fix the problem by upgrading
    CDRtools to the latest Alpha, which is 2.01.01a01. The particular
    culprit seems to be mkisofs 2.0 - the version of cdrecord doesn't make
    a difference.

    See also the snippets of mkisofs output below my signature.

    So I'm back to my old Teac burner (retired as defunct long ago by my
    Windows-based colleagues) and burning on. Even my old RW media
    by Verbatim, scratched and fingerprinted, keeps working just fine :-)

    Frank Rysanek

    mkisofs 2.00, "wrong" filesystem => isolinux defunct
    ================================
    Total translation table size: 2048
    Total rockridge attributes bytes: 330946
    Total directory bytes: 989184
    Path table size(bytes): 4466
    Max brk space used 1f1000
    44528 extents written (86 Mb)

    mkisofs 2.00, "right" filesystem => isolinux works
    ================================
    Total translation table size: 2048
    Total rockridge attributes bytes: 330654
    Total directory bytes: 987136
    Path table size(bytes): 4452
    Max brk space used 1f0000
    44880 extents written (87 Mb)

    mkisofs 2.01.01a01, "right" filesystem => isolinux works
    ======================================
    Total translation table size: 2048
    Total rockridge attributes bytes: 330654
    Total directory bytes: 987136
    Path table size(bytes): 4452
    Max brk space used 2a7000
    45004 extents written (87 MB)

    mkisofs 2.01.01a01, "wrong" filesystem => isolinux works
    ======================================
    Total translation table size: 2048
    Total rockridge attributes bytes: 331024
    Total directory bytes: 989184
    Path table size(bytes): 4466
    Max brk space used 2a7000
    45208 extents written (88 MB)

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