[PLUG] Re: CDWriter hangs the computer during fixation

[George Langford <amenex@amenex.com>]

Hello Fred & fellow PLUGgers !

Progress !  
CDWriter still hangs the computer but I don't care any more ...

Fred suggested:

> mkisofs -r -J -T -o cd.iso [path to compendium of data for CD]

which worked without a hitch; I simply overwrote the previous,
eight-characater-plus-three-character filenames in the old cd.iso
master file with a new one of the same name in which the files 
have their original, long filenames.

Then I burned the CD-R disk as follows:

	cdrecord -dev=0,0,0 -data cd.iso (i.e., as before)

Alas, the burn produced a screenfull of nasty remarks, starting
with:

	Oops: 0000
	CPU: 0
	EIP: 0010 :[<c011c8b0>] Not Tainted
	FLAGS: 00010207
	etc.

And the computer hung, big time, with the keyboard's LED's flashing 
ominously as in a James Bond movie.  I had to hit the reset button 
in order to reboot with what now seems to be the routinely necessary 
boot floppy in place. Contr+Alt+[any function key] had no effect.

Oddly enough, the CD-R disk can be read with the Power PC and 
Windows Explorer; and it auto-mounts in the Linux PC, even though 
the procedure that Fred recommended:

> mount -t iso9660 /dev/sr0 /mnt/cdrom

produces the error message (paraphrasing):

	special device /dev/sro does not exist/not found

The new CD-R disk has about half a megabyte more data, presumably 
contained in the longer filenames and in the trans.tbl files (see
below) that reside in all the directories and subdirectories.

I did find that Star Office 5.2 can open even the 50MB MS Word97 
document, but that it cannot execute its hyperlinks, apparently 
because of memory limitations, 'cuz some of the hyperlinks do 
work in smaller MS Word97 documents on the same CD-R disk.

The newly created CD-R disk has some extra "trans.tbl" text 
files which appear to tell [which ?] operating system[s] the 
relationships between the actual filenames and the long versions, 
as in:

  Linux[?] filename             MS W98 filename

> F CUTMA000.JPG;1             	CutMarks061A.jpg
> F CUTMA001.JPG;1              CutMarks073.jpg
> F CUTMA002.JPG;1             	CutMarks069.jpg
> F CUTMA003.JPG;1             	CutMarks067.jpg

etc.

Last night I ordered two pieces of software to alleviate my Newbie 
problems and get back to work:

	Linux Mandrake 8.2 PowerPack
	Codeweavers' CrossOver

These were recommended by another Linux/Windows user who had had 
a similar experience with a preinstalled Linux system from the 
same vendor that I tried.

This fellow recommended that I wipe everything off my hard drive 
and start over with the new operating system.  Does this mean that 
I have to really remove everything, including the user0 directory, 
or can I sequester that somewhere, out of harm's way ?  If I do so, 
how do I initiate the sequence with the Red Hat Linux file manager 
so it preserves what it needs to perform these tasks before the 
proverbial little arm comes out of the box and pushes the stop 
button ?  I guess I might answer my own question by suggesting that 
I use that all-so-necessary boot floppy ...

Best regards,
George Langford
amenex@amenex.com
http://www.amenex.com/
http://www.georgesbasement.com/

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