[NTLUG:Discuss] ISO images too large...

[Wayne Dahl]

On Mon, 2003-10-06 at 09:17, Wayne Dahl wrote:
> Ok, I've reached my wits end to figure out what I'm doing wrong here. 
> I'm attempting to write the RH9 cd's from the ISO's I downloaded.  I'm
> using XCDRoast (latest version) and when I tell it to calculate the size
> of the image from the disc 1 of the ISO, it's coming up with a
> calculated size of almost twice what a CD will handle.  Nothing I have
> been able to do will get it to fit the image onto 1 disc and I don't see
> any option to split it onto 2 discs.  I don't remember having this
> problem when I burned the images for RH8.  What am I doing wrong here?

Well, I found an answer to this, although, I'm not sure why it was. 
This was a case of reading too much stuff.  Since it had been so long
since I'd burned a CD, I googled for CD burning and found a HOW-TO page
that completely led me astray, so far as using XCDRoast is concerned. 
Using the info on that, I attempted to use mkisofs prior to burning and
it created one big .iso text file and putting it in the same directory
along the downloaded iso image.  Somehow or other, when I would select
the downloaded iso image, XCDRoast apparently was looking at both and
attempting to use them both to burn, even though only one was selected. 
Consequently, whenever it calculated the size and compared it to the
media, it returned an error saying the media was too small.

I stumbled on the answer to that when I deleted the file mkisofs created
and had just the .iso I had downloaded in the directory.  XCDRoast then
calculated the correct size.  I still made several coasters though,
because it kept creating .iso files on the CD's...not the file systems.
More frustration led me to the XCDRoast web site (which is probably
where I should have started to begin with- DOH!) and found help in their
FAQ's.  My mistake was that I had the .iso files stored in a different
directory than the HD directory XCDRoast was looking at.  The answer was
in the setup...in the setup screen, under HD settings, you select the
directory to use for Temporary Image Storage Directories.  Here's where
it gets confusing.  If you go to the Create CD screen, select Master
Tracks, on the Master Source tab, you get a File/Directory view and a
Session view.  Using the File/Directory view, you can select files to
burn to CD and select what directory you want them showing under on the
new CD.  If you select the Create session/image tab, you will see where
it will calculate the size of the image and can write from there.  What
it DOESN'T tell you is that it will create an image that is not an iso
file system and will store it in the directory it sees the files in you
selected.  So...I had XCDRoast looking for temporary image files in
~/New/RH9 and had the actual iso's in ~/New/RH9/ISO/RH9_discx.  Once I
moved the iso files directly to ~/New/RH9, XCDRoast worked like a
charm.  

THIS WAS NOT A VERY INTUITIVE PROCESS!!!!  There would have been NO way
I would have figured this out if I hadn't found that one paragraph on
the XCDRoast website.  The HOW-TO really did lead me astray on this
one.  Sometimes reading the documentation really doesn't help if you're
reading the wrong documentation.  Problem is, how do you know you're
reading the wrong docs if you've never done something before...or it's
been so long you've absolutely forgotten what you did?  Mine was trial
and error...and LOTS of frustration.  Hopefully, I won't have this
problem in the future.

Hrm...I smell something burning.  Time to go make that Smoothwall CD. 
:)

Wayne