RE: [seul-edu] CD Server

[Harry McGregor <micros@azstarnet.com>]

On Tue, 15 Feb 2000, Mark Orenstein wrote:

> Over last summer, we brought up a Linux/Samba server for CD imaging to W95
> and W98 clients.  We didn't know much about either Linux or Samba, but here
> is what I recall doing.  On the server I created a CDIMAGES directory.
> Within this directory, I created multiple directories each of which had the
> name of the volume id of the CD being copied.  I had read/write share access
> to the CDIMAGES directory.
> 
> I then inserted the CD to be copied into a W95 client and used W95 SELECT
> ALL/COPY/PASTE function to copy the CD to the appropriate directory on the
> Linux/Samba server.  Each CD directory was given a share name whose name was
> the volume id of the CD.

Ok, I would probably redo the share as readonly after the files are put
on.
 
> We then installed any needed software on the W95/98 clients from the CD
> image shares.
> 
> This has been working well since the start of the school year.
> 
> Can anyone who knows Linux better than me (which is probably close to all
> Linux users) suggest some optimizations?  For example, what is ISO imaging
> and why would it be better?

An ISO image is short for an ISO9660 image.  ISO9660 is the format most
CDROMs are in.

If you do a raw copy of a CDROM to a file, you get an ISO image.  Linux
has the ability to mount a file, as if it was a hard device (loop back
mounting).  By copying to a raw file, you literaly have an image (in fact
good enough for CDR duplication) of the original CD.  You then mount it
just as if it was a CD in the CDROM drive, and then share it out.  It is
also easier to chmod it readonly (chmod 444), and thus it's impossible to
mess up the CD image.

> Mark Orenstein
> East Granby, CT School System

			Harry