Burning more than one installation CD iso to a DVD-RW

kumarkumar · 03-03-2006, 06:14 PM

Some Linux distros have more one installation CD iso's(suse, ultima, etc). I want to try out a lot of distros and see which one works best for me. I don't want to waste CD's by burning each and every distro. So I would like to burn them to a DVD-RW and test them. Now if there is only one installation CD iso then I can burn it on a DVD-RW and use it to install(as is the normal case). But if there are more than one installation CD iso's, then is there a way to somehow burn them all on to a single DVR-RW, and then use it to install the distro??

pljvaldez · 03-03-2006, 06:35 PM

Here's a script I found via google: http://www.pvrguide.no-ip.com/bbs/lo...php?t4560.html

Here's a tutorial from the Suse site http://en.opensuse.org/Making_a_DVD_from_CDs

kumarkumar · 03-05-2006, 05:51 PM

pljvaldez, Thanks for the links.
I guess the tutorial is specific for Suse and Fedora. Is there any geneal procedure for doing that for any distro(either in Linux or Windows)??

pljvaldez · 03-06-2006, 11:01 AM

You should be able to generalize that for any linux. Most of the tools should be available on any distro (or you might have to find the rpm's, deb's, etc for those tools.

On linux, I've heard rumors you probably have to buy a third party software to do that. Try googling for "combine multiple CD iso dvd" or something like that.

kumarkumar · 03-08-2006, 11:30 AM

Thanks pljvaldez.
Since I am a linux newbie, could you please explain as to how to go about the script in the link pvrguide.no-ip.com. I don't even know what does a "script" mean.

What do I exactly do?? Do I copy & paste the code in an editor and then do something with it or do I run the commands one after the other in root console (by commands I mean the ones without the #'s infront of them)?? Please help I am in the learning process.

pljvaldez · 03-08-2006, 03:16 PM

First copy all that to a text editor. Save the file in the same directory as the iso's. I would recommend saving one for each distro you're going to combine, like suse_cds2dvd.sh and ultima_cds2dvd.sh. Then you'll want to give it executable permissions chmod +x suse_cds2dvd.sh.

Now the tricky part (since I don't know the names of the iso files you have) is to change all the "FC2-i386-disc" to whatever Suse and ultima name their cd iso's. Once you do that, just run the file by ./suse_cds2dvd.sh from the directory with all the files.

You also might leave off the bottom two sections of the script

Code:

#  Now burn the resulting ISO image to a DVD.
#  Change "/dev/hdb" to match your DVD device name

    growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/hdb=./FC2-i386-dvd.iso

#  Unmount and clean up

    umount ./FC2-i386-disc{1,2,3,4}
    rm -r ./FC2-i386-disc{1,2,3,4}
    rm ./FC2-i386-dvd.iso
    rm -r ./isolinux
    rm ./.discinfo

and instead manually burn the dvd iso and also manually delete the leftover files. That way if you screw up creating the image, it won't burn something crappy and then delete all the iso's so you have to download them again.

kumarkumar · 03-11-2006, 10:18 AM

Dear pljvaldez, thanks a lot for the detailed info.
I have two Ultima linux iso's and they are named as:-
ultimalinux-8-1.iso
ultimalinux-8-2.iso
I changed the code as per your instructions to the following:-

Code:

#!/bin/bash

#  Create directories on which to mount the ISO images using
#  loop device mounts

   mkdir ultimalinux-8-{1,2}

#  Mount the ISO images using a loop device mount
#  etc.  -- repeat for how many discs that you may want

   mount -o loop -t iso9660 ./ultimalinux-8-1.iso ultimalinux-8-1
   mount -o loop -t iso9660 ./ultimalinux-8-2.iso ultimalinux-8-2

#  Copy the isolinux directory and the .discinfo from disc1
#  to the current directory

   cp -a ultimalinux-8-1/isolinux ultimalinux-8-1/.discinfo .
   sed '2 s/[1]/1,2/g' ./.discinfo >> ./.discinfo1
   cp ./.discinfo1 ./.discinfo
   rm ./.discinfo1

#  Create the iso image.

    mkisofs -o ultimalinux-8-dvd.iso \
    -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat \
    -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table \
    -R -m TRANS.TBL \
    -x ultimalinux-8-1/.discinfo -x ultimalinux-8-1/isolinux \
    -graft-points ultimalinux-8-1 .discinfo=.discinfo isolinux/=isolinux \
    Fedora/=ultimalinux-8-2/Fedora

But when I ran the file I got errors as below:-

Code:

cp: cannot stat `ultimalinux-8-1/.discinfo': No such file or directory
sed: can't read ./.discinfo: No such file or directory
mkisofs: No such file or directory. Invalid node - 'ultimalinux-8-2/Fedora'.

Please tell me where is the mistake.