CDROM Boot Image insanity

[Greg Wildman]

Sessoms, Mack said the following on 07/04/2004 12:58:
> It is strange in that the cd's I made from the original isos work on 7 
> different models of compaq but wouldn't work on my whitebox amd.  I 
> followed Michael Doppler's post and it worked for my whitebox amd.  
> Still works on the compaqs too.  Here is Michael's post:
> 
> For those of you who have problems booting FC2 test2: I got it working by
> recreating the iso image using the following steps:
> 
> 1. Copy the files from FC2 test2 CD1 to a temporary directory:
>        cp -a /mnt/CD1mntpoint /tmp/FC2test2
> 
> 2. Create a new CD1 iso image:
>        cd /tmp/FC2test2
>        mkisofs -v -r -T -J -V 'Fedora Core 1.91 CD 1' -b
> isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size
> 20 -boot-info-table -l -R -o /tmp/FC2test2-CD1.iso .
> 
> 3. Burn the new iso image /tmp/FC2test2-CD1.iso and boot from it.

I have been following this "Cannot Boot CD" saga from the outset. One 
thing I noticed when I tried to roll my own boot disc and from the 
suggestion (point 2) above, there is no boot.cat in the isolinux directory.

Correct me if I am wrong but I have checked every few days (I rsync to 
rawhide daily) and there is no boot.cat in the isolinux dir. According 
to the mkisofs man page:

-c boot_catalog
    Specifies the path and filename of the boot catalog to  be  used
    when  making  an  "El  Torito" bootable CD. The pathname must be
    relative to the source path specified to mkisofs.   This  option
    is  required  to make a bootable CD.  This file will be inserted
    into the output tree and not created in the  source  filesystem,
    so  be  sure  the  specified  filename does not conflict with an
    existing file, as it will  be  excluded.  Usually  a  name  like
    "boot.catalog" is chosen.

So, could the fact be that the catalog file is not present and therefore 
the CD is not "El  Torito" boot compatible have anything to do with the 
"only boots on some machines" problem?

NOTE: I checked the isolinux directory on the boot.iso image and it has 
the boot.cat file present. Again, could this be why it works when CD1 
doesn't?

Grasping at straws here :-)


--
Greg