In response to Question #1: I call a custom boot sector one that I create myself, as opposed to something that I copied from someone else.
In response to Question #2: I don't "need" it, as such, I want to know how to create one because I might end up wanting to create my own operating system (which thus answers Question #3).

So what method and/or software would you suggest for that task?

You do not know what a boot sector is, I think.

Simply put it is just a piece of code that will be used by the firmware to locate the operating system to boot.

So the custom thing is the OS, not the boot sector. Others have already named software able to write DVDs that comply to the El Torito specification, especially include a boot sector (or better said, a boot record) for DVD. You might want to read this article which explains the process, names the most used software (mkisofs, genisoimage and xorriso) and gives examples. To know more you will need to read the man pages.

About creating your own operating system: why not? I wish you good luck.

Just a bit of (not requested, sorry) advice: there is much more to create an OS than just be able to boot it, so the first thing would be to do a lot of reading and learning.

The authors of Syslinux and Bart (BartsPE) used to have a lot of information on that subject.

The issue is more of the age of the target computer and how advanced you want to make the loading mechanism. There are more than a few standards.


I used to take a loader and cat it to track one and for data track two.

Methinks I need to clarify one or two things here. First, I DO know what a boot sector is (I am somewhat of an amateur computer programmer myself), and second, I am not looking to "emulate" anything, all I'm asking is for someone to clue me in as to where I can find software (preferably for Linux, if possible), or information on how to go about creating an original boot sector for CDs or DVDs.

The three software I listed in the post you just quoted are all able to do that. Let me repeat their names below, each on its own line:
mkisofs
genisoimage
xorriso
I confirm that these software are usable on Linux.
mkisofs is included in Slackware.
If you need information on how to get and install xorriso, that I use, just ask, it's always a pleasure to help you (or at least, try).

Alright, I think I see what you're getting at here. Let's say you download an ISO from somewhere, and it's supposed to be able to boot, but for some reason it doesn't work and you think it might be because the boot sector is missing.

If that's the case, the correct fix is to obtain another ISO that's properly built or not corrupted. See, the boot record on a bootable CD or DVD isn't something like a Master Boot Record on a hard drive that you can just dd into place. It contains specific information about what needs to be loaded next. If that's missing, well... you *could* possibly figure it out, but it's probably a waste of time.

If you're looking to create a bootable ISO from scratch, read up on the tools Didier mentioned. By the time you're ready to do that, you'll have prepared a whole file tree to be processed and will know exactly what kind of bootloader you'll be using, so using those tools should be pretty straightforward.

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For an example of it done, you might want to look at Eric's mirror-slackware-current script, found here:

http://www.slackware.com/~alien/tools/