Re: Announcing xorriso-0.1.6

["Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net>]

Hi,

> does it have the capability
> of taking a bootable image, letting me change the non-boot files, and then
> giving me another burnable image?

We strive for that.

>From the man page:

 -boot_image "any"|"isolinux" "discard"|"keep"|"patch"
      Defines the handling of an eventual boot image (El-Torito) which
      has been read from an existing ISO image. All types ("any")  can
      be  discarded  or kept unaltered. The latter makes only sense if
      the format of the boot  image  is  relocatable  without  content
      changes.
      The boot image type "isolinux" can be kept unaltered (not advis-
      able), or discarded, or it can be patched to match  its  reloca-
      tion.  In the latter case the resulting ISO image is bootable if
      the boot image was really complying to the isolinux standard.
      Creation of new boot images is not yet possible.
      CAUTION: This is an expert option. xorriso is not an expert yet.
      It  cannot recognize the inner form of boot images.  So the user
      has already to know about the particular needs of the  bootimage
      which  is present on the input media.  Most safe is the default:
      "any" "discard".

There have been successful experiments with bootable
CD-ROMs where payload files the image were changed (added,
deleted, chmoded, ...) and the newly produced media
did boot.

For that you put the original CD into one drive (-indev) and
write the result to another drive or a disk file (-outdev). 
Like:
  xorriso \
   -boot_image isolinux patch \
   -indev /dev/cdrom \
   -outdev stdio:/my/pseudo/drive/on/disk \
   -add ... -map ... -update_r ... -rm ... -chmod ...

For interactive operation you may use:
   xorriso -dialog on 
The result will be written on commands -end or -commit.

I don't know whether a bootable appendable media stays
bootable with
  -dev /dev/cdrom
rather than -indev ...  -outdev ... .
This would add a session to the media. The session
would hold a new directory tree, a new boot sector
and the data blocks of the new or overwritten files.

--------------

In order to produce bootable images from scratch,
we would need some pointers to documentation. (At least.)


Have a nice day :)

Thomas