burning bootable cd images with 4.23?

darel · January 29, 2004, 9:59am

Hi,
Is it possible to create an image that is burnable to a CD that is bootable? we would like to deliver some software on a CD rather than on diskettes, we are using QNX 4.23…

Thanks for any help or advice you can offer!

rick · January 29, 2004, 2:22pm

It’s not possible to do the actual burning in QNX4, but you can certainly create the bootable install image in QNX4 and use another platform (windows, linux) to burn the cd.

You need to find or compile mkiso9660 for QNX4 anduse that to create your image. We did this to create QNX4 install systems for a customer and it worked great.

darel · January 29, 2004, 2:35pm

Hi,

I figured this one out just after I posted, you can actually download mkisofs for qnx4 from qnx.com, details at
http://www.qnx.com/support/sd_bok/solution.qnx?5348

You can use dd to create a corrected boot image that address a cdrom instead of floppy disk and use the -b and -c options on mkisofs, and add any other files as a part of the iso9660 image.

Interestingly QNX also claim there is support for CD Burning directly from QNX via third party software from Young Minds Inc.

all the best

rgallen · January 30, 2004, 2:11am

You can burn cds from QNX6, using cdrecord (which is free). I wouldn’t burn cds any other way…

darel · January 30, 2004, 10:43am

Hi,
Bah only one problem to try to fix now with this bootable install CD, the license command seems to refuse to copy licenses from CD to HD , (normal floppy is okay though).
Anyone have any good solutions to this? I read in an earlier thread “igor” had written a utility to copy old style licenses to new style licenses (which should work for us as we use 4.23)

noc · January 31, 2004, 5:58pm

I digged out the old quics archive and the following thread may be interested to you:

Martin Zimmerman:

You can “convert” the /etc/license files to “normal” files fairly easy. It
typically needs to only be performed once, although using license to copy
the “normalized” files may put them back into their original form (and
thusly require conversion again).

The “trick” with these files is that they show with a file size of 100 bytes,
when infact they are 512 bytes in length. They do not get corrupted or
over-writeen by other files due to the fact that a block (512 bytes) is the
granularity of the filesystem (in other words files always occupy
multiples of blocks rather than bytes).

So, get the directory entry for each file, this should tell you the actual
disk block that the file starts at (or in this case the only block it
occupies), read that entire block and write it out as a new file, with
length 512. When you are done doing this for all files in /etc/licenses you
can delete the origianl 100 byte files and rename your new files to the
names of the original files. You will now have license files that work and
that can be backed up and restored off tape without special contortions in
your backup scripts.

Jean-Claude MICHOT even posted the actual working C code … He can be contacted at jcmichot.usenet-fr.net/

dvddon · February 17, 2004, 10:47pm

In addition to YMi, Luminex recorders can also burn bootable cd/dvd from UNIX or Linux.