[syslinux] xorriso or genisoimage syntax assistance

[Dean Graff]

On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 2:31 AM, Thomas Schmitt <scdbackup at gmx.net> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> > # Most linux distros dont have `mkisofs' (
>
> Or they have genisoimage under the name "mkisofs".
> (e.g. Debian, Archlinux)
>
...


> I would add option -R or -r for Rock Ridge names and file attributes.
> This will make appear the files with their original names, as in
> ISO_root, when the ISO filesystem gets mounted on unix-like systems.
> (Up to 255 characters of 8 bit each. E.g. UTF-8.)
>
> Thank you for this ^ .

>
> http://wiki.osdev.org/El-Torito#Example_of_ISO_Filesystem_Production_Run_for_BIOS
>
And this ^.

  man xorrisofs
>   http://www.gnu.org/software/xorriso/man_1_xorrisofs.html
>
> Some of these options are add-ons which you will not find
> in mkisofs. Vice versa, several mkisofs options are not supported
> by xorriso -as mkisofs. Most notably: -udf, -hfs.
>

This also is perfect, i found  `xorriso -as mkisofs' last night, and it
worked great. And `xorrisofs' seemed to work even better. But I really want
to push xorriso to its limits. And utilize its capability to make a .iso
that when written to a USB, one can "claim the extra space" as another
partition. As they are using in the current debian-live.

So i came up with this:
xorrisofs \
-o output.iso \
-no-emul-boot \
-boot-info-table \
-boot-load-size 4 \
-c isolinux/boot.cat \
-b isolinux/isolinux.bin \
-partition_offset 16 \
-partition_cyl_align auto \
ISO_root


This works great, but i first have to run `isohybrid output.iso' which
seems to reverse or ruin the special .iso partition. I am guessing it is
just a matter of grokking xorrisos options. I didn't expect to get the
maintainer of `xorriso' so thank you for your time Thomas. Great tool, I am
going to proceed to statically compile it like Mattias mentions below, so i
always have a copy on hand.

I then run:

is_not_an_isohybrid()
{
sudo dd if=output.iso  of=/dev/sdX
sudo parted /dev/sdX mkpart primary 10MB 100MB -m -s
}

This of course is no good, because it has not been prepared to be a
"isohybrid". But the partitioning is successful.

But again, after i prepare it by running `isohybrid' this capability for a
second partition is gone, as below:

does_not_work()
{
isohybrid output.iso
sudo dd if=output.iso  of=/dev/sdb
sudo parted /dev/sdb mkpart primary 10MB 100MB -m -s
# Creates an error for parted. does not work.
}

Thank all of you for the help, Sincerely -dean