Fix genisoimage errors in Debian-based distributions with cdrtools
Have you ever attempted to create an ISO image on your Debian-based distribution? I have.
Recently I tried to create a Slackware ISO and I can only say the experience wasn't the most pleasant. After getting a copy of the file tree onto my system I (actually it was the script I was using) tried to create an ISO out of it. Here's the result:
Although it says 'Done!' in the end, notice the errors in the middle of the terminal window. I can confirm, no ISO was produced.
After some googling I came across the explanation: apparently mkisofs was replaced on Debian-based distributions by genisoimage. This would be OK as long as it didn't introduce this kind of problems.
After more googling I came across the solution here which states that an easy fix for this would be to replace genisoimage with the older cdrtools (which includes the also old mkisofs).
After following the steps there I decided to write a simple shell script to help with the switch from genisoimage to the cdrtools. This is how this script was born.
This is very easy since all is done by issuing
sudo sh -c "wget https://github.com/RJ-Jesus/cdrtools-fix/raw/master/cdrtools_fix.sh -O - | sh"
This needs sudo rights since it will write to /usr/bin, for example. You can obviously check the source code if you think it's going to do anything nasty.
This command assumes you have the package build-essential installed and want the script to run with the default settings. Otherwise download it, make it executable (chmod +x cdrtools_fix.sh) and check the help page (cdrtools_fix.sh -h).
After replacing genisoimage et al. with cdrtools this is what I got trying to again create an ISO image of Slackware-current
And I can confirm that the ISO was indeed made.
There seems to be some bugs in the genisoimage/wodim suite and thus I think it's more advisable to keep using software that works, despite being older.
Ricardo Jesus