Sorry - just a noobe here. I looked around the install help on the Mandrake site, but I can't seem to figure out what I am doing wrong.

I have the 3 CD disk images, but how the heck do I make the first one bootable? I used XP file manager to copy the ISO right onto a CD, but when I try to boot from it I get a complaint that its not a bootable image.

I have looked in a few other CD writing programs and I have failed to find a bootable image/CD option.

I tried decompressing the ISO and there is a boot.iso in the image directory, but from what i was reading, I got the impression that is for making a bootable floppy.

Anyway - I don't want to burn 10 CD's while I try to figure out the problem, I just don't see any settings or instructions.

It seems to me the problem must be that a specific part of the image needs to be in a specific location on the CD, but I am at a loss for getting it there.

So, I guess it boils down to this - can I make the Mandrake CD images bootable or do I have to make a boot floppy?

If I can make the CD's bootable, what's the best WinXP utility / method or how do I get the image to be truley bootable?

If you have the Mandrake 10 isos then go get the Nero demo and have a mooch about. In one of the menus is the option to burn a disk from an iso and it should sort it.
Disk 1 should be bootable by default.
When I first started I was in a simialr position and I got a prg called isobuster but it didn't extract the isos properly.
Nero did.

OK - great, so I don't have to change the extra-long file name and there aren't any bootable CD options, its just a matter of finding the poper CD utility (e.g. Nero), and letting it figure out its a bootable image and it will do the right thing?

In nero there is a Burn image option in one of the menus. Your iso file is a complete CD image, not a file to be dropped onto a new data cd. From memory the burn image command is about halfway down the file menu in Nero, but I could be wrong, it's been over a year since I last used it

OK - great that worked, thnx.

So now my Disk01 is bootable. I found a CD program that will let me "burn an ISO image".

OK - so here is my next question - yes I know it will sound odd/crazy, but do you think I can get away with just dragging and dropping the other two images (disk02 & disk03) - or will I have to use the "burn an ISO image as well"

I am just curious, because if I can drag and drop them onto a simple CD Data Disk (and the OS from the first dick will recognize the ISO files that way), then I will save myself from installing more one use software.


.
Thnx

nope
you need to burn them

unless you do a bare bones install from disk one and then copy the isos to the hard drive and mount them

I've never done this, though I think it can be done.

Well thanks for the help. This is really bothersome to me though. I need to look into the data layout difference between making a data disk and buring an ISO image.

It seems to me, with this type of device, the single image should just need to be placed on the media without any special care. I mean, the data structure (and thus the copy procedure) should be a simple serial process. Thus, if an ISO file fills a CD completely, and always starts at the same location, it should always end up with every thing in the proper place.

Its not like it needs a file allocation table or other nonsense. Well, for WORM CD's anyway.

No, you are misunderstanding the fundamental differences between the two things.

An ISO image is a byte for byte copy of the contents of a disk.

It's a "SNAPSHOT" of each block of a CD.

If you use the file manager to copy the file to the disk, you are placing a COPY of the IMAGE onto the disk, instead of recreating the original disk.

It's like placing a zipped file onto a disk, and then finding that a newbie can't execute the containing file because they lack the WinZip program, etc. to use a loose analogy.


The image format is a way to circumvent the need to remaster the disk or to have to explain to someone how to make a disk bootable, or what burning parameters to use, etc.

It's no different than the floppy.img file created by utilities such as rawwrite.exe under Windows.

Otherwise people would have to make the files available individually (which they are on the repositories btw) and then produce long explanations on how to recreate the original CD's.

This process can be quite daunting as for a bootable installation disk, mastering one, requires creating a temporary partition, etc.

That is why each disk must be seperately burned from the image.

When done properly you can mount the resulting disk on any Windows or Linux machine and see the original layout created by Mandrake, and NOT a single large file sitting on the disk.

Well – this is what I am trying to say . . .

A hard drive or floppy or such will be fragmented because the size of each file can not be known until it is time to write the file. The FAT, Cylinder, head, and sector layout of these devices are perfect for handling this functionality by transforming a file into a linked list so it can be broken up into smaller files (transparent to the user) and distributed around a disk. This can even speed up performance if done properly.

If you do a file copy, the OS will/can reconstruct a file and the entire image (from its constituent parts) – only diskcopy would copy sector by sector and preserve the original disk image rather than trying to optimize file by file (or Norton Ghost does the same basic thing).

But a CD (WORM) doesn’t suffer from this ‘haphazard’ layout. It has a single track the spirals from a known starting point to a known ending point. If there is a single file, the OS only needs to know the starting point of the file and it can assemble the pieces (from a linked list) into a single contiguous file. The OS should do this anytime it is copying a file onto a WORM device as it gains no advantage in leaving it as a linked list.

So, in the end, if the image file is as big as the media, the there should only be one layout for the image on the WORM - even if it is just dragged and dropped and not specifically mapped to the device.

Obviously, this is not the case, so I am trying to figure out why. I can’t imagine a specific sensible reason (considering the spiral layout and WORM functionality).

Just aint right.

You unfortunately missed the analogy.

An ISO image contains the file and directory structures themselves, or in Linux's case Inodes, etc. encoded in the same layout they would normally have on a standard hybrid Rockridge CD.

By merely throwing the ISO file onto the disk as you have reported doing, you are using the layout produced by the host OS at the time, not that contained within the ISO.

You have in effect recorded one continquous file (the iso file itself) onto the disk.

What you have NOT recreated the original disk structure which is contained/encoded within the ISO itself.

This is also not true!

There are many different formats and layouts for CD's and DVD's.

Rockridge, Redbook, UDF, Joliet, etc.

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The ISO encompases the above. The DVD or CD can be layed out with any format when it was mastered, but the ISO "image" is a snapshot of the contents (and layout) of the original disk.

Let's say you had a Linux/Unix (only) Rockridge layout disk which is NOT readable by XP/NT.

You then could make a snapshot of this disk (the ISO image) and copy the ISO image to XP.

If you "drop" this file into a new blank disk, you are creating a UDF disk containing a FILE which in turn is an image of a Rockridge disk.

So while XP would not see anything on the original Rockridge disk or report an error, the duplicate you created in this process, would show one large file sitting on a UDF formatted CD or DVD which would indeed be visible to XP.

However that is all that XP would see, the original file which was improperly burned to disk.

Haha - I got it that time. Thank you for being persistent. Maybe now I will be able to sleep without having to dig through some inane specifications.