Making Data CD's

updated 06/30/2000

The quick overview - ISO9660

  1. Run xisofs (installed in /usr/freeware/bin)
  2. Source Path should point to the directory you want burned. You won't get symlinks unless you ask for them (checkbox).
  3. Destination Path should point to a non-existant file on a filesystem with enough room to store the entire image.
  4. Check "Use Rock Ridge" and "Adjusted Rock Ridge Attributes" if you have filenames longer than 8 characters.
  5. Choose "Build Image" from the "Build" menu
  6. Choose "CDR Options" under the build menu.
  7. Under "Device SCSI ID, LUN" give it THREE numbers seperated by commas: The SCSI controller number, the SCSI ID number, and the LUN (typically 0). For example, on an O2 with an external cd-write on the base SCSI bus (scsi controller 1) at ID 4 you would use 1,4,0.
  8. Choose "Write CD-ROM" from the "Build" menu
Note: ISO9660 CDs can be made instable if the proper files are in the root of the directory structure. You'll need a ".distribution" file (empty is okay) for pre 6.5, and the additional ".IM" and ".IM_XXXX" files for 6.5.x (look at a distribution cd if you're interested). By convention, and to make life easier on your users, put "inst" format software in a directory called "dist" at the root of your CDROM filesystem.

Disk Duping

To dupe a disc, you can follow the instructions above, except you'll need to check the "Use DD to Make Image" checkbox, and put the path to the raw CD volume (/dev/rdsk/dks0d4vol on an O2) in the Source Path line.

If you get read errors, you may have to (as root) turn off mediad while you're copying in the data:

/etc/init.d/mediad stop
(note that xisofs has been modified to do this automatically, and to restart it)

IRIX 6.5.x seems pickier about this. Replace "stop" with "start" on the above line to turn mediad back on.

We've tested this with EFS and ISO9660, but it will NOT work with audio CDs.
 

EFS

As noted above, you can duplicate an efs format cdrom easily with xisofs - it just uses "dd" to
copy in the disk image, then fires up cdrecord using the disk image.

Sunil Jagarlamudi reports that using the make_efs utility off of the SGI Developers' Toolbox
site along with either xisofs or cdrecord allows you to make efs cdroms with your own contents.
Use the make_efs utility provided in the CDmastering source to generate volume header (.vh)
and efs files (.efs), then concatenate the two together into a data file to pass to cdrecord or xisofs: 

cat mystuff.vh mystuff.efs > mystuff.cddata
If you're using xisofs, just put the path to "mystuff.cddata" in the destination file text box
(leave the source one blank) and write out the cd.

The CDmastering utilities are in the SGI Developers' Toolbox at http://toolbox.sgi.com
 If you don't have access to this site,  a (not often updated) version of the software can be found here.   Note that some of the utilities (burncd, mkdisc) in this package will be fairly
useless to you unless you have an old Sony cdwriter.