Re: ISO image
alex said:
> A real beginners question. What is an ISO image? There's
> a lot of stuff out there but I can't find anything that
> defines what it is...what it does..... Can someone point me
> to somewhere that discusses it?
it's sort of like an archive. It is a file which usually contains many
files/directories inside it. It maintains a format that is compadible with
CDROMs(CDROMs require data to be written to them in a special way) so that
the file can be transferred around and maintain the data structure.
CD-R software(most) can take this image and place the contents of it on
a CD. Many systems can also access ISO images directly, under linux you
can do:
mount -t iso9660 filename.iso /mnt/cdrom -o loop
and you get the contents of filename.iso mounted on /mnt/cdrom
ISO images also maintain a lot of other data such as file permissions for
unix systems(if the ROCKRIDGE extensions are used), or long filenames
for win32 systems(if the JOLIET extensions are used) etc.
some people make the mistake of burning the ISO image itself to a CDROM,
this is not the way to do it, the software must understand what the file
is, and how to use it. Most CD-R software does. The only one I can think
of that does not is Adaptec's software(though this may of changed, it's
been about 5 years since I used it).
more info looks like can be found here:
http://www.linuxiso.org/viewdoc.php/isofaq.html
nate
Reply to: