If I wanted to make an iso from my mandrake cd's, what commands would I need to use in mkisofs? I have looked at the man pages but there is a lot of stuff in there that I am unsure if I need them or not.

You don't use mkisofs. That command is used to make an iso from data that isn't in iso format. But since you are trying to copy the existing iso structure from your CD, the command you want is dd. Assuming that your cdrom is /dev/hdc, you would use this command:

dd if=/dev/hdc of=image.iso

This will make an iso file named (you guessed it) image.iso.

Enjoy!
--- Cerbere

You must right, because I tried to make an ISO image for a cd copy of my Mandrake 9.1 CD mounted at /mnt/cdrom:

mkisofs -R /mnt/cdrom/* -o mandrake9_1.iso

But this failed, I believe because of two README files that couldn't be included or something like that.
But I _could_ copy my quake2 cd this way.

Isn't it true that you *usually* make .iso files with mkisofs? Why is it mandatory to use dd for such an occasion?

Thanks guys, I'll try out the dd command

Perhaps instead of saying 'you don't use mkisofs', I should have said 'you don't have to use mkisofs'

The difference between these two commands is that 'dd' is simply copying data (the dd stands for duplicate data), whereas mkisofs has to construct a new iso filesystem from existing data. The advantage of using dd is that there is already an iso filesystem on your cd, so it is simpler (for the computer) and more reliable to copy the entire filesystem to a single file, and to do this, you use the dd command.

If you have mounted your cd (which you don't have to do for the dd method), then the mkisofs command that you list should work, wuck. Though I would use '-r -J' instead of '-R', in order to use Joliet directory records with the simpler Rock Ridge protocol. This will ensure that your disk is compatible with windows (Joliet) and portable to other Linux machines (Rock Ridge minus uid/gid/permissions). However, mkisofs is more appropriate for making an iso image from a group of files on your hard drive, since they need to be 'converted' to the iso filesystem.

Enjoy!
--- Cerbere

Ah, I see. Because you use the unpacked iso file, you can simply copy it. But I had a Mandrake 9.1 CD copied to my harddrive, which then I should have converted to iso by the command you said:

Right?

you can even use cat
cat /dev/cdrom > poo.iso
the devices are part of what makes linux sweet.

That's it, wuck :-)

I didn't know you could use 'cat' for this, whansard. Thanks.

Enjoy!
--- Cerbere