MKISOFS(8)

NAME
mkisofs - create a iso9660 filesystem with optional Rock Ridge attributes.

SYNOPSIS
mkisofs [ -R ] [ -T ] [ -v ] [ -a ] [ -f ] [ -V volid ] [ -p preparer ] [ -P publisher ] [ -x path ] -o filename path

DESCRIPTION
mkisofs is effectively a pre-mastering program to generate the iso9660 filesystem - it takes a snapshot of a given directory tree, and generates a binary image which will correspond to an iso9660 filesystem when written to a block device.

mkisofs is also capable of generating the System Use Sharing Protocol records specified by the Rock Ridge Interchange Protocol. This is used to further describe the files in the iso9660 filesystem to a unix host, and provides information such as longer filenames, uid/gid, posix permissions, and block and character devices.

Each file written to the iso9660 filesystem must have a filename in the 8.3 format (8 characters, period, 3 characters, all upper case), even if Rock Ridge is in use. This filename is used on systems that are not able to make use of the Rock Ridge extensions (such as MS-DOS), and each filename in each directory must be different from the other filenames in the same directory. mkisofs generally tries to form correct names by forcing the unix filename to upper case and truncating as required, but often times this yields unsatisfactory results when there are cases where the truncated names are not all unique. mkisofs assigns weightings to each filename, and if two names that are otherwise the same are found the name with the lower priority is renamed to have a 3 digit number as an extension (where the number is guaranteed to be unique). An example of this would be the files foo.bar and foo.bar.~1~ - the file foo.bar.~1~ would be written as FOO.000;1 and the file foo.bar would be written as FOO.BAR;1

path is the path of the directory tree to be copied into the iso9660 filesystem.

OPTIONS

-a  Include all files on the iso9660 filesystem. Normally files that contain the characters '~' or '#' will not be included (these are typically backup files for editors under unix).

-f  Follow symbolic links when generating the filesystem. When this option is not in use, symbolic links will be entered using Rock Ridge if enabled, otherwise the file will be ignored.

-o filename
    is the name of the file to which the iso9660 filesystem image should be written. This can be a disk file, a tape drive, or it can correspond directly to the device name of the optical disc writer. If not specified, stdout is ]used. Note that the output can also be a block special device for a regular disk drive, in which case the disk partition can be mounted and examined to ensure that the premastering was done correctly.

-P publisher_id
    Specifies a text string that will be written into the volume header. This should describe the publisher of the CDROM, usually with a mailing address and phone number. There is space on the disc for 128 characters of information.

-p preparer_id
    Specifies a text string that will be written into the volume header. This should describe the preparer of the CDROM, usually with a mailing address and phone number. There is space on the disc for 128 characters of information.

-R  Generate SUSP and RR records using the Rock Ridge protocol to further describe the files on the iso9660 filesystem.

-T  Generate a file TRANS.TBL in each directory on the CDROM, which can be used on non-Rock Ridge capable systems to help establish the correct file names. There is also information present in the file that indicates the major and minor numbers for block and character devices, and each symlink has the name of the link file given.

-V volid
    Specifies the volume ID to be written into the master block.

-v  Verbose execution.

-x path
    Exclude path from being written to CDROM. path must be the complete pathname that results from concatenating the pathname given as command line argument and the path relative to this directory. Multiple paths may be excluded (up to 1000). Example: mkisofs -o cd -x /local/dir1 -x /local/dir2 /local

AUTHOR
mkisofs is not based on the standard mk*fs tools for linux, because we must generate a complete copy of an existing filesystem on a disk in the iso9660 filesystem. The name mkisofs is probably a bit of a misnomer, since it not only creates the filesystem, but it also populates it as well.

Eric Youngdale <ericy@gnu.ai.mit.edu> wrote both the linux isofs9660 filesystem and the mkisofs utility, and is currently maintaining them. The copyright for the mkisofs utility is held by Yggdrasil Computing, Incorporated.

BUGS
Continuation records are not generated - program dies with message if record overflows.

Any files that have hard links to files not in the tree being copied to the iso9660 filessytem will have an incorrect file reference count.

There may be some other ones. Please, report them to the author.

FUTURE IMPROVEMENTS
Allow specfication of multiple paths on the command line to be included in iso9660 filesystem. Can be tricky - directory entries in the root directory need to be properly sorted.

Allow for transparently compressed files in some form or another.

AVAILABILITY
mkisofs is available for anonymous ftp from tsx-11.mit.edu in /pub/linux/BETA/cdrom/mkisofs. It is considered to be in late beta testing - a number of people have generated one-off discs with versions 0.98, and only extremely minor problems were reported and corrected in version 0.99.