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Creating An Image From A Collection Of Files
To create an iso image file containing the contents of a directory, we use the genisoimage program. To do this, we first create a directory containing all the files we wish to include in the image, and then execute the genisoimage command to cre- ate the image file. For example, if we had created a directory called ~/cd-rom-files and filled it with files for our CD-ROM, we could create an image file named cd- rom.iso with the following command:
genisoimage -o cd-rom.iso -R -J ~/cd-rom-files
genisoimage -o cd-rom.iso -R -J ~/cd-rom-files
The “-R” option adds metadata for the Rock Ridge extensions, which allows the use of long filenames and POSIX style file permissions. Likewise, the “-J” option enables the Joliet extensions, which permit long filenames for Windows.
A Program By Any Other Name...
If you look at on-line tutorials for creating and burning optical media like CD- ROMs and DVDs, you will frequently encounter two programs called mkisofs and cdrecord. These programs were part of a popular package called “cdr- tools” authored by Jörg Schilling. In the summer of 2006, Mr. Schilling made a li- cense change to a portion of the cdrtools package which, in the opinion of many in the Linux community, created a license incompatibility with the GNU GPL. As a result, a fork of the cdrtools project was started that now includes replacement programs for cdrecord and mkisofs named wodim and genisoimage, re- spectively.