[syslinux] Trying to build bootable iso but very confused by syslinux documentation

John Lewis
Tue, 03 May 2016 05:27:08 -0000

On 05/03/2016 12:27 AM, Geert Stappers via Syslinux
wrote:
> On Mon, May 02, 2016 at 11:21:13PM -0400, John Lewis via Syslinux wrote:
>> I was trying to follow this tutorial
>> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCDCustomizationFromScratch. i got
>> confused with the part about Create an isolinux.cfg file.
>>
>> The show stopper for me was the mkisofs because the closest command I
>> had available was xorrisofs and I think a switch was different.
> At https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCDCustomizationFromScratch is
>
> | Create the Cd Image Directory and Populate it
> |
> | There are 4 packages that need to be installed on the Host System
> | which provide the tools to make the Cd image. Syslinux contains
> | isolinux which makes the Cd bootable. Squashfs-tools will compress
> | the image. Genisoimage provides mkisofs tool to turn a directory into
> | a CD image. So install syslinux, squashfs-tools, mkisofs and sbm.
> |
> |   sudo apt-get install syslinux squashfs-tools genisoimage
>
> I did install genisoimage on a Debian system and is misses indeed
`mkisofs`,
> so must likely also no `mkisofs` in the Ubuntu package.
>
> I don't know if `xorrisofs` superseeds `mkisofs`.
>
>
> Subject: Re: [syslinux] Trying to build bootable iso but very confused by
syslinux documentation
>
> It is the syslinux documentation that we, this mailinglist, can update.
>
> Where is the part that got you confused?
>
>
>
> Groeten
> Geert Stappers

I tried to cross reference with the syslinux wik, for isolinux
http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php?title=ISOLINUX, but it was just
as unclear. It was using mkisofs as well.

There are two parts that are unclear. Where and what isolinux files to
put on the directory tree I want to turn into a bootable iso and what
command to run to convert the directory tree into a bootable iso image.

There are some miscellaneous things such as syslinux configs and using a
squashfs root operating system volume, but I can solve that myself via
trial and error after these show stoppers are out of the way.