Customizing UBCD

Do to license restrictions, the Ultimate Boot CD does not contain boot disks of commercial software eg. MS-DOS, Windows, Ghost etc. It also does not contain boot disks specific to your environment eg. network drivers, SCSI drivers etc. Finally, it may not always contain the most up-to-date virus definitions. This section talks about how to create your own customized Ultimate Boot CD, tailored to your specific needs.

First, download a Win32 port of mkisofs here, or here (mirror), or here (local mirror). There are a number of files inside the ZIP file. You only need to copy mkisofs.exe to a directory which is in your path.

Then, copy all the files on the UBCD to a directory on your harddisk such as c:\ubcd. If you wish, you can directly extract the files from the ISO image using a tool such as WinISO or Daemon Tools.

You should now have a directory structure that looks like:

c:\ubcd\
  boot\
    cdsh.bin
    loader.bin
    cdshw.com
    cdshell.ini
    fonts\
      [Various .f16 files]
    menus\
      [Various .scn files]
    modules\
      [Various .csm files]
  docs\
  dosapps\
  freesco\
  images\
    [Various .img files]
  INSERT\
  isolinux\
  licenses\
  tools\
  ubcd\
  autorun.inf
  mkubcd.bat
  mkubcd.sh
  ubcd.ico

You can now customize the Ultimate Boot CD by adding your own floppy images to the CD. Floppy disk images can be created from the physical floppy disks themselves by using utilities such as rawread, or Floppy Image (you need to goto "Settings", and select "Create compatible IMG files").

Create a new subdirectory called custom and place your personal floppy disk images there. The exact name does not matter, since the idea is to separate your personal floppy images from the UBCD default ones so that maintenance and upgrade becomes easier.

Then edit c:\ubcd\boot\menus\custom.scn to add each floppy disk image and its activation keystroke to the final ISO image. Use the existing .scn files as reference. If you need more information, please refer to the CDShell documentation.

Finally, at the command prompt, from c:\ubcd, type:

mkubcd.bat

This will create ubcd.iso in the root directory of the current drive.

Additional resources:

UBCD Forums