On 12/15/05, Ow Mun Heng <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Thu, 2005-12-15 at 19:15 +0000, Neil Bothwick wrote: > > > the rest. I then have a weekly cron script that compresses the backup > > directories with squashfs and writes them to ISO images ready for writing > > to bootable DVDs. It makes restoring individual files very easy, and a > > completely hosed system can be fixed because the DVDs are bootable. > > how can one create bootable CDs/DVDs? Is there a simple way to transfer > GRUB into the DVD/CDs? Or would "dd" of the /boot partition transfer the > whole thing??
The boot process for a CD is very very different than from a hard drive. Basically the BIOS has to pretend that the CD drive is actually a floppy, or a hard drive, for implementing the BIOS calls used by the boot loader. Doing a "dd" of a boot partition and writing that to a CD would not work. There are several different software packages that can make bootable CDs, including GRUB. Ok, it isn't really GRUB that makes the CD bootable, but mkisofs. To use GRUB, you have to make a /boot/grub directory in your CD tree, and copy the stage2_eltorito file into that directory along with grub.conf/menu.lst. Then when you run mkisofs, you add the options: -b boot/grub/stage2_eltorito -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table Someone who uses a GUI for CD burning will have to comment on how to do this without the command line! -Richard -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
