Syslinux - Mar 2005 - bug+fix: isolinux, mkisofs - added one directory to the CD => won't boot

[cross-posted to nntp://comp.os.linux.setup, sorry]

Dear Everyone,

I'm writing this message merely to publish this information 
somewhere visible, so that others can find it when debugging a 
linux-based bootable CD compilation setup...

For many months now, I've been using cdrtools 2.0 with 
isolinux 2.04 to create bootable Linux CD's. I know there are 
newer versions of both available, but I follow the premise 
that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

Yesterday I added one more directory (with two files) to my CD
prototype directory and the resulting CD failed to boot.

Some BIOSes would hang while probing the CD-ROM for bootable 
media, other BIOSes would just say "NO OPERATING SYSTEM 
FOUND". Only an old Compaq Presario notebook with a brand new 
slim Sony burner would boot off the impaired CD.

I immediately suspected that the heavily abused RW media gave 
up, or that my venerable burner was gone. Then I suspected the 
CD-ROM where I was trying to boot, then the BIOS. I tried 
about four different burners and four different CD-ROM drives 
in three different computers, with old and fresh writeable and 
re-writeable media, I even explicitly fsck'ed my hard drive 
(Ext3), before I started to look at the prototype filesystem 
and the tools I was using.

Unsurprisingly, nothing changed in my burning setup - except 
for the addition of two more files (and a 1st-level directory) 
to the CD prototype directory.
I repeatedly invoked and removed the problem by adding and 
removing this latest addition.

Amazing as it may sound, I managed to fix the problem by 
upgrading CDRtools to the latest Alpha, which is 2.01.01a01. 
The particular culprit seems to be mkisofs 2.0 - the version 
of cdrecord doesn't make a difference.

See also the snippets of mkisofs output below my signature.

So I'm back to my old Teac burner (retired as defunct long ago 
by my Windows-based colleagues) and burning on. Even my old RW 
media by Verbatim, scratched and fingerprinted, keeps working 
just fine :-)

Frank Rysanek




mkisofs 2.00, "wrong" filesystem => isolinux defunct
===============================Total translation table size: 2048
Total rockridge attributes bytes: 330946
Total directory bytes: 989184
Path table size(bytes): 4466
Max brk space used 1f1000
44528 extents written (86 Mb)


mkisofs 2.00, "right" filesystem => isolinux works
===============================Total translation table size: 2048
Total rockridge attributes bytes: 330654
Total directory bytes: 987136
Path table size(bytes): 4452
Max brk space used 1f0000
44880 extents written (87 Mb)


mkisofs 2.01.01a01, "right" filesystem => isolinux works 
=====================================Total translation table size: 2048
Total rockridge attributes bytes: 330654
Total directory bytes: 987136
Path table size(bytes): 4452
Max brk space used 2a7000
45004 extents written (87 MB)


mkisofs 2.01.01a01, "wrong" filesystem => isolinux works
=====================================Total translation table size: 2048
Total rockridge attributes bytes: 331024
Total directory bytes: 989184
Path table size(bytes): 4466
Max brk space used 2a7000
45208 extents written (88 MB)