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- ISOLINUX
-
- A bootloader for Linux using ISO 9660/El Torito CD-ROMs
-
- Copyright (C) 1994-2003 H. Peter Anvin
-
- This program is provided under the terms of the GNU General Public
- License, version 2 or, at your option, any later version. There is no
- warranty, neither expressed nor implied, to the function of this
- program. Please see the included file COPYING for details.
-
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- ISOLINUX is a boot loader for Linux/i386 that operates off ISO 9660/El
- Torito CD-ROMs in "no emulation" mode. This avoids the need to create
- an "emulation disk image" with limited space (for "floppy emulation")
- or compatibility problems (for "hard disk emulation".)
-
- This documentation isn't here yet, but here is enough that you should
- be able to test it out:
-
- Make sure you have a recent enough version of mkisofs. I recommend
- mkisofs 1.13 (distributed with cdrecord 1.9), but 1.12 might work as
- well (not tested.)
-
- To create an image, create a directory called "isolinux" (or, if you
- prefer, "boot/isolinux") underneath the root directory of your ISO
- image master file tree. Copy isolinux.bin, a config file called
- "isolinux.cfg" (see syslinux.doc for details on the configuration
- file), and all necessary files (kernels, initrd, display files, etc.)
- into this directory, then use the following command to create your ISO
- image (add additional options as appropriate, such as -J or -R):
-
- mkisofs -o <isoimage> \
- -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat \
- -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table \
- <root-of-iso-tree>
-
- (If you named the directory boot/isolinux that should of course be
- -b boot/isolinux/isolinux.bin -c boot/isolinux/boot.cat.)
-
- ISOLINUX resolves pathnames the following way:
-
- - A pathname consists of names separated by slashes, Unix-style.
- - A leading / means it searches from the root directory; otherwise the
- search is from the isolinux directory (think of this as the "current
- directory".)
- - . and .. in pathname searches are not supported.
- - The maximum length of any pathname is 255 characters.
-
- Note that ISOLINUX only uses the "plain" ISO 9660 filenames, i.e. it
- does not support Rock Ridge or Joliet filenames. It can still be used
- on a disk which uses Rock Ridge and/or Joliet extensions, of course.
- Under Linux, you can verify the plain filenames by mounting with the
- "-o norock,nojoliet" option to the mount command. Note, however, that
- ISOLINUX does support "long" (level 2) ISO 9660 plain filenames, so if
- compatibility with short-names-only operating systems like MS-DOS is
- not an issue, you can use the "-l" or "-iso-level 2" option to mkisofs
- to generate long (up to 31 characters) plain filenames.
-
- ISOLINUX does not support discontiguous files, interleaved mode, or
- logical block and sector sizes other than 2048. This should normally
- not be a problem.
-
- ISOLINUX is by default built in two versions, one version with extra
- debugging messages enabled. If you are having problems with ISOLINUX,
- I would greatly appreciate if you could try out the debugging version
- (isolinux-debug.bin) and let me know what it reports.
-
- YOU MAY WANT TO CONSIDER USING THE DEBUGGING VERSION BY DEFAULT.
-
-
- ++++ NOTE ON THE CONFIG FILE DIRECTORY ++++
-
- ISOLINUX will search for the config file directory in the order
- /boot/isolinux, /isolinux, /. The first directory that exists is
- used, even if it contains no files. Therefore, please make sure that
- these directories don't exist if you don't want ISOLINUX to use them.
-
-
- ++++ BOOTING DOS (OR OTHER SIMILAR OPERATING SYSTEMS) ++++
-
- WARNING: This feature depends on BIOS functionality which is
- apparently broken in a very large number of BIOSes. Therefore, this
- may not work on any particular system. No workaround is possible; if
- you find that it doesn't work please complain to your vendor and
- indicate that "BIOS INT 13h AX=4C00h fails."
-
- To boot DOS, or other real-mode operating systems (protected-mode
- operating systems may or may not work correctly), using ISOLINUX, you
- need to prepare a disk image (usually a floppy image, but a hard disk
- image can be used on *most* systems) with the relevant operating
- system. This file should be included on the CD-ROM in the /isolinux
- directory, and have a .img extension. The ".img" extension does not
- have to be specified on the command line, but has to be explicitly
- specified if used in a "kernel" statement in isolinux.cfg.
-
- For a floppy image, the size of the image should be exactly one of the
- following:
-
- 1,228,800 bytes - For a 1200K floppy image
- 1,474,560 bytes - For a 1440K floppy image
- 2,949,120 bytes - For a 2880K floppy image
-
- Any other size is assumed to be a hard disk image. In order to work
- on as many systems as possible, a hard disk image should have exactly
- one partition, marked active, that covers the entire size of the disk
- image file. Even so, hard disk images are not supported on all
- BIOSes.
-
-
-