Unix ISO Mastered to CDR on Windows - Need Win Program

[Stewart]

Is anyone aware of a WINDOWS program that can Master a CD from an ISO file (containing Unix long filenames and upper/lower case letters created a on Unix System) where the files will then work on a Unix system?

[Inertia]

GEAR CD and DVD Burning Software! for Windows supports Rock Ridge extensions to ISO 9660. From the GEAR help manual page 207:

Rock Ridge File Names

For Unix systems, the special extensions to ISO 9660 are called Rock Ridge. Rock Ridge offers much more power with supporting file names up to 256 characters, including Unix file permissions and the special Unix file types (links, pipes, fifo’s and device special files). GEAR for Windows supports the creation of Rock Ridge extensions. In the GEAR image you can even assign Unix file permissions, user ID’s, etc. However Rock Ridge extensions are not switched on by defaults, as most users do not require it. You have to enable Rock Ridge in the preferences. Anyway, if you enable Rock Ridge, you will be able to mount your CD correctly on Unix systems.

[cfitz]

If you already have a pre-made iso image, you can just burn it directly with any program that supports burning iso images. I don't know if Roxio does, but Nero does, and the freeware burnatonce does also:

www.burnatonce.com

If you need to make the iso image first, burnatonce will work for you as well. It provides a GUI to a Windows port of the command-line mkisofs program (originally a unix/linux program) that makes the actual image and, true to its heritage, supports Rock Ridge extensions.

If you prefer not to download burnatonce and use its GUI, you can instead download a Windows port of mkisofs directly. You can find it as part of the cdrtools package:

ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/cdrecord/alpha ... 32-bin.zip

Once you have made the image with mkisofs, you can burn it with the cdrecord software included in cdrtools or any other program that will burn iso images.

By the way, since burnatonce is a GUI to mkisofs (and cdrdao), you will find those programs included as part of the burnatonce distribution. Check the "external" subdirectory of the burnatonce installation directory.

cfitz

[CDRecorder]

Yes, ECDC will burn a *.ISO image.

[Inertia]

If you already have a pre-made iso image, you can just burn it directly with any program that supports burning iso images.

ISO images are supported by Easy CD Creator. The ISO file extension is used generically for a number of different file formats that may not be supported by a program that supports some forms of ISO images.

cfitz, how does any Windows program that supports burning ISO images burn Unix file structures without specifically supporting these structures in its ISO settings?

[cfitz]

Although there may be exceptions, in typical use an .iso image file consists of the raw sector-by-sector image of a single-track mode-1 disc (2048 bytes per sector). Thus, the burning software doesn't need to know anything about the content represented by those bytes nor how those bytes should be interpreted in terms of filesystems, etc. It just copies the sectors, byte by byte, to the CD-R. As long as the data corresponds to a single-track mode-1 disc, the burning software doesn't need to know anything else about it.

Because of this, the usage of the term "iso" in this case can be somewhat misleading. Reading and writing an .iso image file doesn't require that the reading/writing software understand anything about ISO-9660 filesystems or any of their variants, including Rock Ridge. Furthermore, an .iso image file doesn't even have to contain an image of an ISO-9660 filesystem. Andy McFadden's FAQ explains in greater detail:

http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq02.html#S2-28

The .iso image "format" is often used for delivering Linux distributions over the Internet. You just download the .iso image file that contains a pre-made image of the Linux filesystem with all the required files and binaries already in place, burn it with your favorite burning software, and then boot to install Linux. Here is one site where you can find such iso images, along with its FAQs about iso images and burning them with Easy CD Creator:

http://www.linuxiso.org/index.php
http://www.linuxiso.org/viewdoc.php/isofaq.html
http://www.linuxiso.org/viewdoc.php/winoncdrwin.html

cfitz

[Inertia]

cfitz, thanks, I was unaware of that.

[cfitz]

You're welcome.

cfitz

[CDRecorder]

Yes, thank you, Cfitz! I didn't know that ISO images worked in this way either.