Pardon me if this is the wrong group, but I have a question pertaining
to burning CDs using mkisofs and cdrecord. This question has both
Windows and Linux aspects to it.

I am trying to burn a bootable cd for an evaluation version of NT TSE
(Terminal Server Edition) that will install completely unattended. I
believe that I need floppy emulation, b/c I need to use the
AUTOEXEC.BAT file to launch the unattended install; i.e.
D:\I386\WINNT.EXE /B /S:\I386 /U:A:\UNATTEND.TXT.

Under Win2k and later platforms, I could simply put a file named
WINNT.SIF in the I386 directory and forgo the floppy emulation
altogether, but I do not think this is true with NT.

If I create a bootable CD without floppy emulation, the install works
perfectly. However, if I create a bootable CD with floppy emulation,
various files are not encountered during the install causing it to
fail.

Steps I used to create bootable CD with floppy emulation:
1. Created a Windows 98 boot disk. Tested the boot disk before
creating the boot image.
2. Mounted the Win98 boot disk in linux, ran the dd if=/dev/fd0
of=boot.img bs=18 in the source directory of the iso image.
3. Copied contents of the installation media to the source directory
of the iso image; cp -a /mnt/cdrom/* /srcdir/
4. Made the iso filesystem from the /tmp directory;
mkisofs -JrND -b boot.img -c boot.cat -o src.iso /srcdir/
5. Burned the CD; cdrecord dev=1,1,0 -eject -data src.iso
(Note: I have also tried this using slower speeds)

I test the CD on a VMWare machine, and receive the following message:
"Setup was unable to copy the following file: <filename>"

The message only occurs for some files. I believe that I checked that
the filenames are not being altered or missing after burning the copy,
so I am at a loss.

Again, pardon me if this is the wrong group to post to, but I consider
this issue to be partly related to linux and partly related to
windows.

TIA!

On 25 Jan 2004 14:08:24 -0800, briandesu staggered into the Black Sun
and said:
Sounds a little like black magic to me; check the relevant 'DozeNT
documentation if it exists.

The boot image needs to be exactly 1.2, 1.44, or 2.88M in size.

Um. 'Doze doesn't grok Rock Ridge extensions at all, so why are you
using -r ? I wouldn't use -D if I were you. -D means "don't use deep
directory relocation, just pack the files in the way we see them." If
your /srcdir is more than 8 levels deep, you may find out that deep
files are unfindable since the OS expects deep directory relocation to
have been done. -N means "leave version#s off", which shouldn't do
anything, but if I were you, I'd do:

mkisofs -J -b boot.img -c boot.cat -o src.iso /srcdir
cdrecord -v dev=X,Y,Z speed=W src.iso

If you have a reason why you need -rDN, please explain what it is.

How did you check to see if the files are still in the appropriate
place? Linux is a bit more intelligent about strange ISO9660 problems
than 'DozeNT is, and it groks both Rock Ridge and Joliet, so ls -R'ing
the CD from Linux isn't really a valid test.

Close enough. If I were you, I'd cross-post this to a 'DozeNT newsgroup
in case someone there could help. HTH,

--
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin / mail: TRAP + SPAN don't belong
http://www.brainbench.com / Hire me!
-----------------------------/ http://crow202.dyndns.org/~mhgraham/resume

briandesu wrote:

supported it.

Dances With Crows <danSPANceswitTRAPhcrows@usa.net> wrote in message news:<slrnc18h88.43n.danSPANceswitTRAPhcrows@saman tha.crow202.dyndns.org>...

Thank you for your response. I originally used the exact same syntax
that you provided, but received the following message:

Warning: creating filesystem with (nonstandard) Joliet extensions
but without (standard) Rock Ridge extensions.
It is highly recommended to add Rock Ridge
mkisofs: Directories too deep for
'/root/CITRIX/DRVLIB/STORAGE/IBM/I386/IPSRAIDN/REMOTE/SERVERS' (7) max
is 6; ignored - continuing.
mkisofs: To incude the complete directory tree,
mkisofs: use Rock Ridge extensions via -R or -r,
mkisofs: or allow deep ISO9660 directory nesting via -D.

As a result of the message, I added the -r and -D switches. I added
the -N switch due to a post where I read that NT variants do not like
version numbers on iso media; I can not comment on the veracity of the
post, but I tried it.

If I burn a CD without floppy emulation using all of the previous
switches, then the CD allows installation just fine and dandy.
However, I need the floppy emulation to launch the AUTOEXEC.BAT, b/c
as another post in this thread suggest, the winnt.sif method with NT
was less than desirable.

Eventually, I figured out what was happening. A group of files on the
cdrom have a ~ character in them, which coincidentally were the files
not being read. I need to find a mechanism to allow the files with
the ~ character to be properly read. Everything except for the files
with the ~ character is working as expected.

Cheers.

I needed to add the -no-iso-translate switch when using the mkisofs
command to accomodate the ~ characters.

I really despise M$ for not conforming to standards, but perhaps that
is why their stuff breaks! It is also the reason why I like linux
versus M$.

On 25 Jan 2004 22:49:06 -0800, briandesu staggered into the Black Sun
and said:
[much snippage, mkisofs -rJDN /path ]
Yeah, well... Rock Ridge extensions are *only* used on Unix-like
systems, and *only* if Joliet extensions are not present. The mkisofs
maintainer may want to update his error messages!

OK, so there you have it. If you have ~s in your filenames, and you
want to burn CDs that are readable under Windows, then you need to use
the -no-iso-translate switch. I hope this helps other people who need
to burn CDs.

The *best* thing to do IMHO is to make sure your filenames match the
regular expression ^[A-Za-z0-9][A-Za-z0-9_-]*$ , since filenames that
match that regexp (starts with a letter or number, contains only
letters, numbers, underscores, and hyphens) are always readable under
Linux, MacOS, and Windows. Spaces and punctuation in filenames tend to
create Problems--you dig? Good. HTH,

--
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin / mail: TRAP + SPAN don't belong
http://www.brainbench.com / Hire me!
-----------------------------/ http://crow202.dyndns.org/~mhgraham/resume

briandesu> 2. Mounted the Win98 boot disk in linux, ran the dd
briandesu> if=/dev/fd0 of=boot.img bs=18 in the source directory
briandesu> of the iso image.

I hope you meant "bs=18k".



--
Lee Sau Dan +Z05biGVm-(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)

E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee