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Old 22nd June 2010
rtwingfield rtwingfield is offline
Real Name: Ron Wingfield
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Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Little Rock, AR USA
Posts: 36
Default How to Create a Bootable CD from an .iso file

I have downloaded the 8.0-RELEASE-i386-livefs.iso file.

Obviously, I don't understand how to use the .iso file scenario because I cannot create a boot'able CD. I have read the man pages, Handbook pages and Googled ad nauseam. (FYI . . .from a philosophical perspective, there is TMI in the ether these days; you can ask . . .one hundred people and you'll get one hundred different "How I did it" solutions regarding Linux, Unbu2toUtoo, Windoze . . .good luck if any are pertinent . . .but I digress. )

If I understand what I'm reading regarding FreeBSD's livefs, then once copied to a CD, it should be bootable . . .useful as an emergency startup tool, if for example, you've hosed your loader.conf file; therefore, your system will not boot . . .as I have done

I've tried several configurations using Nero (on a Windoze box), and none of the resulting CDs are recognized by the BIOS de jour of any box'es mainboard. I've looked and experimented with mkisofs . . . but is that really necessary in consideration that 8.0-RELEASE-i386-livefs.iso already is an iso file? After all, the romance literature states that the CD should be boot'able. But that is counter intuitive to me, because the fact that you burn (i.e., copy) the iso file object to a CD does not convey any information that the BIOS will recognize, i.e, that doesn't create any boot block info on the CD.

On the other hand, when I've run something like mkisofs -o 8.0-RELEASE-i386-livefs.iso -no-emlu-boot -b eltorito_boot_image pathspec, the iso file just gets a little bigger. Nothing is written to the CD . . .which is understandable because the mkisofs just operates on the iso file. The next logical step would be to copy it to a CD. Well, ok . . .fine. Only the CD is still not recognized by the PC's BIOS as a boot'able device.

So . . .question, what am I missing here? One of my unsuccessful Nero experiments actually "unziped" the iso file and created the individual directory-file objects. I could mount the CD and read the contents, but it still was not boot'able. What should I do.

Thanks,
RW
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