Recording discs

Before creating a booting CD with Cinemix, you should download the system and extract the file cinemix.img, which is an image of a bootable 2.88MB floppy disc.
When recording the CD you should create a bootable CD-ROM (or DVD-ROM if you have a DVD recorder). You can use for that any recording software capable of creating such discs, however you should pay attention to startup options. Below are instructions for some of popular recording programs. It is advisable to record such discs in Disc At Once (DAO) mode.
There is also no need to create a playlist - all directories on the CD will be searched for multimedia files and then they will be played.

Nero Burning ROM

It's one of the most popular CD recording software for Windows that supports many formats and CD recorders.
Caution: the images of boot diskettes in Nero have by default extension .ima so when choosing the image file you should choose All files (*.*) in File type or change file name of the image from cinemix.img to cinemix.ima.

A bootable CD cannot be created using the wizard so if it's open close it. Now press Ctrl+N (or first icon from left on the toolbar) and a window appears where:

If you hava a DVD recorder you can choose to create a CD or a DVD.
From the list on the left choose CD-ROM (Boot).
Now at the Boot tab as the Source of boot image data choose Image file, then click Browse... and choose file cinemix.img (or cinemix.ima if you changed the name).
Click Enable expert settings and set: Kind of emulation - Floppy emulation 2.88MB, Load segment of sectors - 07C0, Number of loaded sectors - 1.
Start a new compilation (New button).

Nero boot

Now you can add files to the compilation and proceed with recording as with other discs containing data.

Cinemix is only less than 3 MB in size but it may happen that not everything fits on CD. In this case an overburning can be used together with smaller recording speed (8x). Caution: using overburning may damage your recorder - not all recorders support overburning.

K3B

A very popular program for Linux and KDE. To create a bootable disc proceed as follows:

Create a new project by clicking the icon in lower part of the window or by choosing New Data CD Project from the menu (or New Data DVD Project).
From Project menu choose Edit Boot Images.
A new window will appear where you should click the New..., button and then choose cinemix.img file. The program should automatically set floppy emulation mode and parameters.
Click OK to close boot image file dialog. In the directory structure there should appear boot directory (marked in grey, it cannot be removed). There are files necessary for booting the system from CD. If you want to hide this directory and its contents then click it with right mouse button, choose Properties and in the dialog that pops up check Hide on Rock Ridge and Hide on Joliet.

K3B boot

Now you can add files to the compilation and proceed with recording as with other discs containing data.

Cdrtools

This is a popular package of recording tools for console in Linux. In case of kernels 2.4 and older SCSI emulation is required for IDE drives (this should be configured in kernel). Kernels 2.6 don't require that emulation.
The most important programs are mkisofs (used for disc image creating) and cdrecord (burning discs). First an image file should be created then it can be burned. The text below shows the basic steps to create a bootable CD in TAO and DAO mode. All commands are issued in the console.

First check what recorders are available in system with a command:

cdrecord -scanbus

After issuing this command you will get something similar to this:


    Cdrecord 2.0 (i586-mandrake-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2002 Jörg Schilling

    Using libscg version 'schily-0.7'

    scsibus0:

    0,0,0 0) 'LITE-ON ' 'LTR-48246S ' 'SS0E' Removable CD-ROM

    0,1,0 1) *

    0,2,0 2) *

    0,3,0 3) *

    0,4,0 4) *

    0,5,0 5) *

    0,6,0 6) *

    0,7,0 7) *

As you can see above there is one recorder with address 0,0,0. This address is required by cdrecord program.
Having the address you can check what features the recorder has:

cdrecord dev=0,0,0 driveropts=help -checkdrive

You'll get something like this:


    Cdrecord 2.0 (i586-mandrake-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2002 Jörg Schilling

    Using libscg version 'schily-0.7'

    Device type : Removable CD-ROM

    Version : 0

    Response Format: 2

    Capabilities :

    Vendor_info : 'LITE-ON '

    Identifikation : 'LTR-48246S '

    Revision : 'SS0E'

    Device seems to be: Generic mmc CD-RW.

    scsidev: '0,0,0'

    scsibus: 0 target: 0 lun: 0

    Linux sg driver version: 3.1.24

    Driver options:

    burnfree Prepare writer to use BURN-Free technology

    noburnfree Disable using BURN-Free technology

    forcespeed Tell the drive to force speed even for low quality media

Burnfree option (third line from bottom) says that the recorder has buffer underrun protection system (BURN-Proof, Smart-burn, Just-Link etc.). It's worth using it.

When creating the image of CD it's good to remember about a few things. The most important is that all files to be recorded should be in one directory and there must be sufficient disk space for the image file (usually about 700 MB). To build the image use the following command:

mkisofs -r -J -b cinemix.img -c boot.catalog -o image.iso my_cd

Parameters have the following meaning:
-r - create image with Rock Ridge extension that preserves Linux file system properties, among other things changes owner of all files to root
-J - also create with Joliet extension that allows reading long file names under Windows
-b cinemix.img - use file cinemix.img as the image of boot floppy. This file must be located in my_cd directory
-c boot.catalog - file boot.catalog is required when creating bootable CD, it is created in the CD image
-o image.iso - store the image in image.iso file
-my_cd - all files in this directory will be recorded in the image

When you have the image you can write it on a CD with this command:

cdrecord dev=0,0,0 -speed=8 -driveropts=burnfree -eject -v image.iso

The options mean:
dev=0,0,0 - use the SCSI device with address 0,0,0 (in this example)
-speed=8 - burn with 8x speed (when this parameter is not given the maximum possible speed is used)
-driveropts=burnfree - use buffer underrun protection
-eject - after recording eject the CD
-v - use verbose mode - shows recording progress
image.iso - file containing the image
If the disc is to be recorded in DAO mode use -dao argument.

At first the program waits a few seconds in case you changed your mind and then starts writing the CD showing megabytes already written. When the recording is done the file image.iso can be deleted.

Creating the image and writing can be combined so that the image is written directly to CD:

mkisofs -r -J -b cinemix.img -c boot.catalog my_cd | cdrecord dev=0,0,0 -speed=8 -driveropts=burnfree -eject -v -

In options for mkisofs output option is omitted so data is written to standard output and - character on the end of the line tells cdrecord to read data from standard input. The advantage of this method is that no image file is created, but its disadvantage that size of the image is not known before recording so you have to be sure everything fits (you also cannot record in DAO mode).

If you want to burn the disc on the fly in DAO mode you have to know the size of the image that will be created. You can use -print-size argument of mkisofs program. In that case the following script might be helpful:


  #!/bin/sh

  DEV=0,0,0

  SPEED=8

  DIR=my_cd

  CDSIZE=`mkisofs -r -J -b cinemix.img -c boot.catalog -print-size $DIR`

  mkisofs -r -J -b cinemix.img -c boot.catalog $DIR |

  cdrecord dev=$DEV -speed=$SPEED -eject -driveropts=burnfree -tsize=${CDSIZE}s -dao -