Making an ISO

Instead of taking data and throwing it directly onto a CD, we first make an iso image to burn later. This is advantageous for several reasons which I will not elaborate. So, lets say that all the data that we want is in a certain directory called directory. Here is the command that we issue to make an iso of this directory:

$ mkisofs -r -v -o myNewIso.iso directory/

I'll explain a couple of those command line arguments. The -r is to enable Rock Ridge Extensions, the -v stands for verbose, the -o lets you specify the output file, and directory/ is the directory containing the files that will be in the ISO image. Another thing you might want to do if you want to be Windoze friendly is add a -J this enables Microsoft Joliet Extensions which are very Microsofty and tend to help less fortunate operating systems read CD's.

Ok, that was easy enough now lets say you want to take multiple directories and stick them in the root directory of a CD. Well, the command would look like this:

$ mkisofs -r -v -o myNewIso.iso -graft-points "/=./directory1/" "/=./directory2/"

Burning using cdrecord

Now that we've made our image we need to burn it onto the CD. This is a very simple process:

$ cdrecord dev=/dev/hdc --eject myNewIso.iso

That's it, now we just sit back and watch the magic. When we are done burning the CD will be ejected.

k3b basics

When you first startup k3b (either by typing k3b, or opening it in the menus) you'll be presented with this:

Now you should just pick what type of project you need to burn (usually just a data cd) by clicking on its icon.

Burning a data cd

At this screen all you need to do is drag-and-drop the files the files you want to burn. The contents of the directory you're in is the upper-right box. Your home directory, and sub-directories are in the upper-left hand box. You can drag-and-drop from both of these. Below the "Current Projects" banner is where you want to drag the files to. As you do the guage on the bottom will fill up. The bar will be green while the data still fits a 700 MB (80 min) CD. Here's an example of me backing up my home directory:

Now if you decide to stuff too much onto a cd, the guage's colors will change, like this:

Yellow is when you're close to what k3b considers the CDs limit. CDs tend to be somewhere in this yellow area. Red means you're too far, and it'll never work.

Now that we have a cd that is fills the proper size, we can start burning. You can click the "Burn..." button at the bottom right, the burn button on the toolbar, open up "Project" "Burn CD" in the menu, or just hit ctrl-b. This will open up the burning dialog.

In this you have the options to set before you burn. The important items are:

• tab: Settings: Multisession. If you'd like a cd to be used multiple times until is is full, pick start multisession. If you have a multisession disc in to burn to, pick continue multisession. And if this is going to be the last track on the multisession disc, pick Finish Multisession.
• tab: Volume Desc. This lets you name the CD, make it part of the set, etc.
• tab: Filesystem. Setting Joliet extensions will allow for Windows' fancy naming scheme, though barely palpetable in linux.

The default settings will be fine for both linux and windows, so just clicking burn here will be fine.

And now the CD ejects, and you're done burning a data CD!