Hi, Semih Ozlem wrote: > Can someone familiar with bootcd, xorriso, debian-cd explain how and for > what purpose those commands are used?
xorriso produces and manipulates ISO 9660 filesystems, which may be bootable from optical media and disk-like media. debian-cd is the tool by which the Debian installation ISO 9660 filesystems are made. In its final step it uses xorriso to pack up the prepared files and to advertise some of them to the boot firmware of computers. bootcd promises to create a bootable ISO 9660 filesystem from an installed Debian system. (I write "promises" because i did not try it and did not see reports about its usage and success.) Like debian-cd it uses xorriso to pack up the resulting filesystem. > Is it possible to make an iso of one's current working system (installed or > from a live version) or a backup with these commands, That's the goal of bootcd. > and what is the correct usage of the commands? Your intended use case is probably addressed by https://manpages.debian.org/buster/bootcd/bootcdbackup.1.en.html (A few usage examples would have been nice.) The man pages of bootcd talk of CD and sometimes of DVD. Given their age (2007) it is no wonder that they do not mention BD media which offer 25 GB of storage (even 100 GB if you are willing to pay). Its xorriso related code indicates that the results will work from USB stick too. debian-cd is not intended as backup tool but rather for making installation ISOs. (Again, "CD" means also DVD, BD, USB sticks, memory cards, etc.) There is also debian-live for creating ISOs which are intended as Live systems with no need for a writable hard disk. Both tools have mailing lists, where you may ask for usage instructions: https://lists.debian.org/debian-cd/ https://lists.debian.org/debian-live/ which t xorriso has several use cases and a long list of commands. See https://www.gnu.org/software/xorriso/man_1_xorriso.html#EXAMPLES or "COMMAND EXAMPLES" in https://www.gnu.org/software/xorriso/ With the use case of creating bootable ISOs it is often used via its emulation of program mkisofs, which served debian-cd in the past (and got cloned as "genisoimage"). https://www.gnu.org/software/xorriso/man_1_xorrisofs.html#EXAMPLES Boot related xorriso commands or xorrisofs options are many. Their usage needs substantial background knowledge about boot loader files. I made a wiki page for the purpose of repacking Debian's ISOs: https://wiki.debian.org/RepackBootableISO If it's only about data backup without the capability to boot, then xorriso can be used to make those, too. See "Incremental backup of a few directory trees " in https://www.gnu.org/software/xorriso/man_1_xorriso.html#EXAMPLES and/or ask me for advise. Have a nice day :) Thomas
