Re: Trick to burning a bootable Debian CD?
On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 03:34:19 -0500, Steve Kleiser
<skleiser@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> Burning the CD as an image using Roxio Easy CD Creator 5 on my WindowsXP
> machine results in a CD with a directory structure that looks like it
> should, from Explorer (it's comparable to my purchased CD, which does boot).
> Presumably, the image also provided any required system files.
You cannot determine by examining the file structure whether or not a
CD is bootable.
> But can I confirm that from within WindowsXP?
The way bootable CDs work is to have a floppy image at the front of
the CD which is loaded by the BIOS into memory and assumed by the rest
of the computer to be a floppy disk from there on in. The scheme is
called (I think) el torito and is described in technical detail here:
http://www.phoenix.com/resources/specs-cdrom.pdf
I'm a bit stumped as to how you could confirm it from within windows
XP. If you a UNIX environment such as cygwin or mingw or a livecd like
knoppix you could inspect the cd outside of the filesystem by
operating on the cd-rom block device and using tools like dd.
> Also, is it OK to use a CD-RW, or is
> there some subtle difference? Does the CD need to formatted first, or would
> that just impress "non-Linux-ness" onto it?
I'd doubt it would make much difference, and I don't think formatting
would be necessary - but the boot block would need to be written as
above.
> Are there any freeware utilities to burn an ISO image to CD (e.g.,
> iso2CD.exe or something) that run under Windows? The CD burning applications
> appear to contain numerous features I don't need for this particular
> purpose, and which only serve as potential sources of error.
Nero (www.ahead.de) is not free but available for a time-limited
trial; and I know from experience that it is relatively straight
forward to both write an existing el torito ISO and to create new
ones.
--
Jon Dowland
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