These are the basic steps to create data CD's on naice2:
The easiest way to do this is to assemble all of the files and directories -- or symlinks to them -- underneath a single directory, and generate an image from that directory subtree. The program "mkisofs" generates ISO9660 filesystems; there is also a script, "make_cdfs", which has a simpler interface. Once you have all the files, or links to them, in a directory, you can create a filesystem image by typing:
make_cdfs -V "My Data CD" -o fsimage.iso sourcedir
Each of the entries in the directories in "sourcedir" will appear in the top-level directory of the ISO filesystem; "sourcedir" itself will not. The "make_cdfs" script will follow all symbolic links; the links themselves will not be stored, rather what they point to will. This is useful for creating ISO images from files that are spread around; instead of moving or copying all of the files into a temporary directory, you can create a "symlink-farm" indexing them, and let "make_cdfs" gather the actual data for you.
Important note: The path names given to "make_cdfs" should not normally contain the '=' character, since mkisofs will interpret them differently. See the mkisofs(1) manpage for details.
Under several operating systems, including FreeBSD and Linux, one can mount an ISO9660 filesystem image as if it were an actual CD. This is useful for inspecting the image to make sure all of the files are where you expect them to be, and that you haven't left anything out. The "iso_test" script can help you with this:
iso_test fsimage.iso
(inspect image in subshell)
exit
Load a blank CD-R or CD-RW disc in the drive. A CD-RW disc that was previously written to can be erased:
burn_cd -blank fast (for a quick erase)
burn_cd -blank all (to wipe the whole disc)
Important note: under certain conditions, particularly when working with CD-RW's, the CD-recording software may eject the tray from the drive and then re-load it to ensure the drive's internal state is consistent. As a consequence, you should make sure the space in front of the drive is not blocked.
Different CD-R media from different manufacturers work with different degrees of success in different CD recorders; when you try a brand of CD-R that you haven't used a particular drive before, there is sometimes a trial-and-error process to find out what speeds it can reliably be written at, and what drives can read it. When evaluating our CD recorder, we tested several brands of media at several speeds. See our CD-R media notes for more info.
The "cdrecord" program does the actual CD recording; there is also a script, "burn_cd", which has a simpler interface. Running burn_cd with no arguments will display it's usage message. The easiest way to write the ISO image to a CD is:
burn_cd [-dummy] [-speed n] fsimage.iso
If "-dummy" is specified, a test-write will be done with the laser off, to verify that the system is capable at writing fast enough. Given that our machine is either very lightly loaded or totally unloaded, this is unnecessary if you're the only one logged on.
The "-speed" argument can be used to alter the recording speed from the default; this may be used to slow down the recording for a particular brand of media which has trouble at the higher speed; or to speed up recording from a cautious default for media which works good at higher speed.
After this procedure, you should have a CD containing a single session, containing a single track of data. It will be readable with long filenames on unix and windows systems; DOS systems, Macs, and others may be stuck with short filenames.