developerWorks: Burning CDs on Linux

“Burning CDs from the command line on any platform can be
mysterious and vexing, and this is certainly true on Linux.
However, the commands and terminology are similar enough across
platforms that it’s useful to learn how to write CDs on Linux. A
lot of Linux software is distributed via .iso images, so if you
know how to burn your own CDs, you can download the .isos to create
your own installation disks.

“CD-writing programs are available for both Linux and Windows,
but the Linux versions are more powerful and versatile than their
Windows cousins. In this article, we’ll look at mkisofs and
cdrecord, the workhorses of Linux CD recording. mkisofs creates a
pre-mastered image, to generate an ISO9660/JOLIET/HFS hybrid
filesystem. It both creates and populates a filesystem. Unlike
other data storage media such as hard drives and floppy drives, a
filesystem on CD is not first created, then populated with data.
There is only one chance with a CD-R: formatting it first would
create a disk with an empty filesystem. cdrecord records data on
Orange Book CD-R/RWs, which is pretty much all of them…”

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