Mastering and Recording a CD-ROM under FreeBSD and Linux

Mastering a .iso Image

On your UNIX filesystem, you will build a disk file named something ending in ".iso" which is an exact image of the CD-ROM that you will be recording. This mastering process is done using mkisofs.

mkisofs

-a					# Include all files
-f					# Follow symlinks, don't write 'em
-J					# Enable Jolet
-o /var/tmp/disk.iso
-r					# Rational Rock Ridge. uid=0
-T					# TRANS.TBL for DOS
-v					# yack yack yack
-V VOLID				# Volume Id
 pathlist...

NOTE: If you use -f, and have the directory full of symlinks to directories, and you use "*" as the pathlist rather than ".", the top level of structure will be totally flattened away.

NOTE: Mike has a pre-packaged shell script which does this for you, in ~mike/bin/mkcd.sh

Burning a CD-ROM from a ".iso" Image

To record a ".iso" CD-ROM image onto a SCSI CD-ROM recorder, use these steps. These examples assume that your CD-ROM recorder has SCSI ID 4, and that your ".iso" image is called /var/tmp/disk.iso

First, Load a blank recordable CD-ROM (CD-R) into the recorder, and test to make sure that you have good communication across the SCSI bus with the recorder. Run:

cdrecord -inq dev=0,4,0

Second, make a "dummy" recording (laser off), to test transfer rates and file permissions. You may abort (^C) this after 10-20 Mbytes.

cdrecord -dummy -v speed=4 dev=0,4,0 /var/tmp/disk.iso

Third, record for real by removing the "-dummy" option, e.g.:

cdrecord -v speed=4 dev=0,4,0 /var/tmp/disk.iso

Testing a ".iso" image before recording

Mount the ".iso" image as if it were a CD-ROM.

mount -r -t cd9660 -o loop /n/fs/var/tmp/disk.iso /mnt

Testing an actual CD-ROM after recording

mount -r -t cd9660 /dev/cd0c /mnt