Baslinux mailing list

["Anthony J. Albert" <albert AT polaris.umpi.maine.edu>]

On 2 Feb 2004 at 14:39, James Miller wrote:
>I recently communicated with someone on the issue of writing CD R's
>multiple times, and learned something new I thought other listers might be
>interested in learning as well.  It's also relevant to the bootable BL CD
>topic that's come up recently.  I do so little CD burning that, though
>this may be widely known, it's something new to me and perhaps will be to
>others onlist.  First, let me clarify that this concerns, so far a I
>understand, CD R's - as opposed to CD RW's.  CD R's, as perhaps everyone
>already knows, are supposed to be writeable only once, while CD RW's are
>made to be written to multiple times.  My source informs me that I was
>wrong in thinking that, once you burn a CD R, you cannot put any more data
>on it - even if only part of the CD's capacity is used (you will perhaps
>recall from our discussion on the proposed BL bootable CD how 99% of the
>space on the proposed CD would be "wasted," i.e., not have any files/data
>on it).  Well, my source informs me that I was wrong about CD R's in this
>regard.  The source claims, on the contrary, that further data *can* be
>written to an already-recorded CD R that still has free space on it (like
>the BL bootable CD, which would have only a few megabytes worth of files
>occupying it's ca 600MB capacity).  In other words, you could take that
>bootable BL CD (R), put it in a CD burner, then add the files from
>Slackware71 to do the full HD install, as an example.  Or maybe add some
>documentation there or something.  My source claims to have done this sort
>of thing with CD R's many times.  I don't know if you can go on writing
>and writing to the CD until it's full or not: seems like there should be
>some limitation.  But it seems it can at least be done more than once.
>My source informs me that the potential "gotcha" in doing this is if you
>try to write a file with the same name as a file you already have written
>to the CD R in question.  So, if you have baslinux.gz there, for example,
>and you try to add a file later with the same name, the first baslinux.gz
>will get corrupted.  Apparently, the second one does not get corrupted,
>though.  In the overall, if my source is correct, wasting space on the
>bootable BL CD that's been talked about recently may not be the compelling
>issue it seemed earlier.  Input from others onlist who have CD burning
>experience and can either confirm or refute what my source is telling me
>will be appreciated.
>
>Thanks, James

This is true, but....

There are several ways which can accomplish this, but they boil down to 
one of two things:

A. Proprietary formats for doing so - Adaptec/Roxio has good software 
for this, Nero is supposed to be good, as well. When using a 
proprietary driver, you can treat the CD-R pretty much like any other 
removable media, except that you every time to re-write a file with an 
existing name, it writes out the old version as having been deleted.  
This also requires installation of the Adaptec/Roxio drivers on each 
computer you're going to read the CD on - can't be read on a standard 
computer, without the drivers.

B. Orange Book multisession format
        There is a standard for recordable CDs - called the "Orange Book"  
Multiple sessions can be written to the CD, but only the most recent 
session is available.  Some standard CD-ROM and CD-audio players can 
use this format on a CD-R, some can't.  Got to have software capable of 
writing in this mode, however, and usually, each session is treated as 
an entirely new use of the CD-R, i.e. all previous sessions are marked 
as "unavailable".  Also, every session has to be recorded as 
"multisession", as far as I know, or else the CD can't be recorded 
again.

Personally, I keep a half-dozen CD-RW on hand, and use them for backups 
and testing of a new CD recording session.  When I've finallized the 
session as having everything I want, I copy it to a CD-R.  I don't do 
multi-session recording, preferring to erase a CD-RW completely, and 
record a single session on it.

Hope this helps,
Anthony Albert

P.S.  I do like Stephen's idea of including the Slackware 7.1 
distribution on the same CD as a bootable version BL 2.x  - sounds like 
a great idea for getting a moderately new computer up and running BL in 
a hurry, with the opportunity to add a few packages from the SL 
distribution easily, for testing purposes.  I expect that it'll all fit 
on one CD... my copy of SL7.1 reports 645MB in use. It might be 
necessary to omit something; I'd have to give it a try.   My first 
impulse is to omit the "ZIPSLACK" folder and all in it.  If you're 
booting from CD, and booting BL, then who needs to boot from ZIP disk?


===========================================================
Anthony J. Albert                     albert AT umpi.maine.edu
Systems and Software Support Specialist          Postmaster
Computer Services - University of Maine, Presque Isle
        "This is only temporary, unless it works."
                        --- Red Green