I ought to know better than to say "SUCKS" in any case.
I tried to make the point that, other things being equal
(I know about filesystems in general, I'm just not familiar with their
peculiarities in dealing with CDs),
all I wanted to "see quickly" was the example use. Had the handbook's
example for "burncd" merely
had an example "mkisofs" command generating the input to be burnt with
burncd, I would have "gotten it"
right away. Others have pointed out that "man burncd" discusses ISOs,
but that material is on "man page 2",
as it were - and in reading the description and arguments, I was gulled
by the phrase "fixating the CD writes
a TOC and makes the CD readable". It said it wrote files to the CD, I
didn't see a reminder or warning that
only ISOs would make sense. Now that I know better about what can
meaningfully be put on a CD, now I know.
I had always equated ISOs with "bootable install images", but now I get
it. In fact that distinction was reinforced
in using windows CD burning software where ISOs had to be handled
differently to be written correctly - what
I was otherwise seeing was what appeared to be dumping files to the CD,
but underneath the program was
encapsulating the data as ISO on the fly, evidently. I wouldn't suspect
"burncd" didn't function similarly.
And, of course, everyone else already knew about ISOs, and so nobody
thought to ask that pre-basic question.
As to the "why didn't you just read ..." - I was in a hurry; this was a
trivial thing to be able to do, so I knew it
was only a matter of seeing commands to do it and I'd take it from
there. In fact, I didn't go back and read the
documentation to find out what was wrong; I just took a look at the
"cdrecord" command doc and the mkisofs
example to create the source was there, and I said, oh, ran it for
burncd, voila. So the "missing FAQ" would
be sort of an intermediate or slight level of detail, perhaps more like
a tear-out reference card summary of the
actions to take (and any underlying kernel/library/package requirements.)
My apologies to Father Greg.
==
Jerry McAllister wrote:
On Fri, Mar 23, 2007 at 03:00:49PM -0400, Jerry McAllister wrote:
On Thu, Mar 22, 2007 at 04:16:58PM -0700, UCTC Sysadmin wrote:
In looking at the documentation for "cdrecord", the examples showed a
two-step process
of making an ISO image then burning it.
Here's my deal:
NEVER HAVING BURNED a CD or DVD on FreeBSD before -
I go to the documentation to FIND OUT HOW
and there really is no HOW
So I look in vain for
"What you need to do in the kernel if anything to support burning CDs/DVDs"
"What additional support libraries or software would be needed"
"The stepwise process for burning CDs or DVDs"
I created a junk file called "junk.tar" as a single file to put on a CD to
prove the command works.
I then use
burncd -f /dev/acd0 data junk.tar fixate
and of course trying to
mount -t cd9660 /dev/acd0 /mnt
fails and the CD is also unreadable on windows.
Well duh. That is because THE FILE SYSTEM HAS TO BE CREATED MANUALLY.
Now, users used to smart unix commands read the man page and it SAYS of
burncd
fixate writes a TOC and makes the CD readable
I am writing an ISO9660 device (a device for which ISO9660 is a reasonable
default FS - yes? no?)
Any meaningful defaults here? Did the man page tell me I hade to wrap my
data inside a filesystem image?
I did not see that. So DUH is right.
I then said, hey.
mkisofs -R -o image.raw junk.tar
THEN said
burncd -f /dev/acd0 data image.raw fixate
and VOILA like magic all is good. It works and reads on unix and windows
like a champ.
Sorry for replying to my own reply, but.
Oh, I just assumed you had done the mkiso.
Should be mkisofs of course.
If that is not in the handbook and FAQ, it should be, of course.
Just took a look and the handbook does have all this and more.
You should actually read it before jumping all over everything
about lack of documentation. There may be some terminology such
as Rock Ridge and Joliet that could use a more clear explanation,
but what you needed to know was clearly there.
////jerry
Sorry.
////jerry
=======
So THE FAQ and/or HOWTO SUCKS, is the problem. If that offends purists, try
fixing your transmission
under deadline with a japanese shop manual translated into english and no
diagrams. Documentation makes
all the difference, both to novices and to professionals. Someone who knows
the how and what should
write a contributed thing - whenever they have the time and desire to
educate the unwashed masses.
-foo-
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