Specifications

Place this floppy image into the directory holding the collection of your files (or into a subdirectory of it, just
as you like). Tell mkisofs about this file with the option '−b' and also use '−c'. For details read the file
README.eltorito in the mkisofs−distribution.
An interesting application for a custom bootable CD is as a virus safe DOS− or Windows−system. It saves
you the money for the hard disks (if you have a network and use samba to put the user−data on a file server).
The German computer magazine c't has a article about this issue in the issue 11/99, page 206 (
http://www.heise.de/).
Some details about the bootable RedHat CD−ROM is available from
http://members.bellatlantic.net/~smithrod/rhjol−technical.html.
4.12 How to make CD−ROMs writable like a hard disk?
There is an overlay filesystem available for Linux, which is mounted over the CD−ROM and intercepts all
writing operations. New and modified files are stored elsewhere, but for the user it looks like the CD−ROM
is modified. For more information, see http://home.att.net/~artnaseef/ovlfs/ovlfs.html.
If that is not enough for your needs: wait for the UDF−filesystem to be supported by Linux or help
developing it (see http://trylinux.com/projects/udf/. At the moment only reading of CD−media is supported
due to a limitation in the CD−ROM drivers of the Linux kernel.
4.13 Is it possible to use several writers at once?
Yes. It is reported to work with at least 3 writers at full speed (6x) on a PC with 233 Mhz and a single SCSI
bus running kernel 2.2.12. You need either a recent version of the Linux kernel (2.2.12 or higher).
4.14 What about Solaris, *BSD, AIX, HP−UX, etc.? Is my
variant of Unix supported?
Only chapter 2 is Linux−specific. You can apply chapter 3 and 4 even if you run another family of operating
systems than Linux. Please see the files README.NetBSD, README.aix, README.hpux,
README.next, README.solaris, README.sunos, README.vms or README.xxxBSD from the
cdrecord−distribution.
Probably yes. Compile cdrecord for your platform and issue the command "cdrecord −scanbus". Read the
README.* file for your Unix distributed with the sources of cdrecord. However, not all variants of Unix can
read the RockRidge, Joliet or HFS extensions on your newly written CD−R.
CD−Writing HOWTO
4.12 How to make CD−ROMs writable like a hard disk? 26