[syslinux] Problem with mkisofs (i guess :-))

[Josef Siemes]

Hi,

toma daniel <toma_daniel2k at yahoo.com> schrieb am 10.03.03 08:35:47:
> Hello! I have a problem with a bootable cd that i'm
> trying to make ..
> The problem is that i don't know what all the mkisofs
> parameters do and because that weird things happen, if
> the filenames or directorynames contain spaces they do
> not open and if i'm in windows's safe mode it gives me
> an error message stating that the file or folder does
> not exist!

mkisofs mangles the filenames to go with the ISO9660
standard. That is, 8.3 with several further restrictions
(special characters not allowed etc.pp.). For a linux or
a windows system needing longer filenames there are the
rock-ridge (unix) or joliet (windows) extensions.

On a linux system you can check which file names are used
with an option to mount.

This is cited from the isolinux manual:

--
Note that ISOLINUX only uses the "plain" ISO 9660 filenames, 
i.e. it does not support Rock Ridge or Joliet filenames. It can 
still be used on a disk which uses Rock Ridge and/or Joliet 
extensions, of course. Under Linux, you can verify the plain 
filenames by mounting with the "-o norock,nojoliet" option 
to the mount command. Note, however, that ISOLINUX does 
support "long" (level 2) ISO 9660 plain filenames, so if 
compatibility with short-names-only operating systems like 
MS-DOS is not an issue, you can use the "-l" or "-iso-level 2" 
option to mkisofs to generate long (up to 31 characters) 
plain filenames.
--

So you should never reference any rock-ridge or joliet file
names from isolinux itself.

The explanation to all mkisofs parameters is in the mkisofs
man page, for the important ones:

mkisofs 
       -o output.iso [Output .iso file]
       -b isolinux/isolinux.bin [isolinux binary]
       -c isolinux/boot.cat [iso 9660 boot catalog - is created from mkisofs!]
       -no-emul-boot [no disk emulation with e.g. 1.44 MB] 
       -boot-load-size 4 [size of bootloader (isolinux)]
       -boot-info-table 
       root-of-iso-tree [directory where your cd starts]

Regards,

Josef

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