• mkcd and mkiso - easy to use CD burning scripts
• Overview
• Usage
• Installation

mkcd and mkiso - easy to use CD burning scripts

Overview

mkcd and its precursor mkiso comprise a simple no-brainer data CD burning kit for those of us who love the command line.

Also see their manual entries: mkcd.1.html and mkiso.1.html.

Usage

Typical usage is:

• Create directory for the CD contents
  
Its name should normally match desired the CD volume label. Set it up with everything you want for the CD laid out as you desire. We'll pretend it's called dirname below.
• Burn the CD:
  

        $ mkcd dirname

Because you've pointed mkcd at a directory it will call mkiso automatically to make an ISO9660 CDROM image. If you wish you can exert finer control over things by making the ISO image yourself with mkiso.

Note: mkiso (and thus mkcd if used as above) make the ISO9660 image in the current directory unless you use the -o option. In mkcd's case this is primarily because generic places like /tmp often don't have CD-sized amounts of free space.

These scripts have a few options but are deliberately short on knobs to twiddle. They're are naturally just wrappers for Jörg Schilling's [http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/glone/employees/joerg.schilling/ excellent mkisofs and cdrecord utilites [http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/glone/employees/joerg.schilling/private/mkisofs.html], which have a great many knobs.

Installation

These are just scripts. Install them in your execution $PATH. It will be necessary to tell mkcd your CD burner's SCSI id. You can also specify the CD burner through the environment variable $MKCDDEV or the /etc/mkcdrc or $HOME/.mkcdrc files; see the manual entries for details.