[CharlesS]

Hi all. After an exhausting amount of fiddling, tweaking, and testing, I think I've finally discovered the reason why boot CD's made from files on the hard drive instead of the installer CD never worked. Therefore, I've finally been able to fix the problem, and now I can make boot CD's entirely from files on the hard disk. It works on my machine, and I would like to know if it works on other people's machines as well. If you'd like to take it for a spin, download this:
http://homepage.mac.com/csrstka/BootCD.sit

and *please* tell me whether it works or not for you.

In this version, I pretty much completely rewrote the code in BootCD that copies the files. It is more elegant now - the files it copies are (for the most part) not hard-coded into the program but rather stored in a couple of .plist files inside the program. One of them specifies files that will get copied from the boot drive to the image, and the other specifies stuff that will be copied from your current user directory to root's user directory on the image. If you have some pet framework you like to add that I don't add, you can easily customize the program by opening the app bundle and modifying the .plist files. Hopefully, I will eventually have a UI for doing this, but for now this is at least better than the old way. Also, BootCD now grabs all files from the hard disk instead of the CD, allowing you to make a 10.1.3 boot disc as well as solving the problems users were having if they had a disc named "Mac OS X Upgrade CD" when my program wanted it to be named "Mac OS X Install CD." I've also noticed that the CD made with this version seems to be able to boot from my external FireWire burner, while others have only worked in the internal DVD-ROM drive, so this one may be compatible with more drives than the old ones (probably due to 10.1.3's improved CD-RW drivers).

Also, I finally got the loginwindow process to work right - it required making a special version of the netinfo database on my backup system. This is done, and the new database will be put on the CD. In this version of the netinfo database, there is one user, root, and its password is set to 'BootCD' (for Xeo, who always wanted a root password on the disk. Now you've got it).

Finally, this version incorporates some auto disk mounting scripts provided for us by Mike Bombich. They are capable of mounting up to nine partitions other than the CD at boot, I believe. Mike is also responsible for getting me interested in figuring out why this didn't work with files from the hard drive in the first place, as well as providing various other advice and assistance along the way, so this might not have worked without him.

Of course, you still need to mount something to /tmp for anything that uses the security framework to work. I've thought of a way to possibly get around that, but it would be a lot of work, and I am not sure it would even work, so I think I'll just postpone worrying about that until later, when I have more time.

Okay, that's about it. Enjoy! (If you missed the download link, it's near the top of this post.)

Charles

[edit: ha ha! Due to an ingenious UBB screw-up, the download link included half the text in this post. D'oh!]

[ 02-24-2002: Message edited by: CharlesS ]

[ 03-07-2002: Message edited by: CharlesS ]

[zpincus]

Three cheers for CharlesS!


thanks so much for all the time you've put into this.

Originally posted by CharlesS:
<STRONG>Hi all. After an exhausting amount of fiddling, tweaking, and testing, I think I've finally discovered the reason why boot CD's made from files on the hard drive instead of the installer CD never worked.
[snip]
Also, I finally got the loginwindow process to work right - it required making a special version of the netinfo database on my backup system. This is done, and the new database will be put on the CD. In this version of the netinfo database, there is one user, root, and its password is set to 'BootCD' (for Xeo, who always wanted a root password on the disk. Now you've got it).

Finally, this version incorporates some auto disk mounting scripts provided for us by Mike Bombich. They are capable of mounting up to nine partitions other than the CD at boot, I believe. </STRONG>

For those of us who like o do things the hard way, or just like to know more about the guts of OS X, could you (at your leisure, of course) post precisely what you found out? Eg: wht now allows files copied from the hard drive to work? What is special about the NetInfoDatabase on the boot disk? How do the auto disk mounting scripts work?

Thanks again. This makes OS X that much closer to being perfect.

Zach

[BTP]

Charles-

I'll give this a go tomorrow evening, I am off to bed soon. I tried to make a 10..1.2 install CD and that was a rousing failure!

So maybe I'll stick to my 10.1 install and try to make this boot CD. I'll let you know how I do.

[Mr. Blur]

Thanks Charles for your efforts....

I tried and successfully booted from the cd...woohoo! It was very very slow however....I thought at times it was maybe hung or something....and I think it did hang when I went to re-boot - I waited a good 5 minutes or so and then hit the re-set switch.

But even if it's slow, it'll be a great util to have....especially when we get all the native disk utilities (norton, retrospect, diskwarrior, techtool etc).

[Alex Duffield]

Couldnt you mount a ram disk to /tmp??

Can you even do ram disks in X???

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Alex Duffield:
<STRONG>Couldnt you mount a ram disk to /tmp??

Can you even do ram disks in X???</STRONG>

Wouldn't that be nice though?

[CharlesS]

And now, for some BootCD humor:

Follow the discussion at the top of this page:



[ 03-07-2002: Message edited by: CharlesS ]

[ervier]

This is great! Thanks a lot for the effort. It is really slow to start up like this, but it works. I haven't tried my firewire drive yet. Some observations: the program asks which apps you want to include. I chose the diskutility and terminal, so I had them twice. I suppose I should have RTFM! Acrobat Reader didn't install properly, just as a folder. Is it possible to login as an existing user in future releases? That would maybe require hardcoding the path to the user-folder. The System Preferences app didn't display any applications, probably because I just selected the System Pref. app alone.

[yukon]

CharlesS, fix that url. thanks

anyone have the console there? try opening it up and see if OS X is trying something wierd and timing out. or maybe top -d?

The OS X install cd was terribly slow. I thought it crashed numerous times on my first few times using them. Possably apple should set one programmer aside to make a streamlined OS X bootdisk - I know, "Lets Make a Petition"!

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by yukon:
<STRONG>CharlesS, fix that url. thanks </STRONG>

Which one? They all seem to work to me...

[BlackGriffen]

Congrats Charles! Could I make a small feature suggestion in the future? Make it so that the user can customize the password put on the boot cd. A password is nice, but having the ability to look it up on the internet is pretty much pointless.

BlackGriffen

[yukon]

Originally posted by CharlesS
Which one? They all seem to work to me...

the macosx hints one. the legnth of the url, an unbroken string of characters, distorts the forum screen requiring users of some browsers to scroll back and forth to read each sentance.

anyway, I booted from the 10.1 cd, and the full installation was much faster than it used to be. I can really use this utility - thanks.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by yukon:
<STRONG>

the macosx hints one. the legnth of the url, an unbroken string of characters, distorts the forum screen requiring users of some browsers to scroll back and forth to read each sentance.

anyway, I booted from the 10.1 cd, and the full installation was much faster than it used to be. I can really use this utility - thanks.</STRONG>

Got it. Does this work better?

I just thought that the top discussion on macosxhints was pretty silly, and very funny.

As for the password thing - I don't I can make the user customize the password, since I'd have to know what encryption scheme NetInfo uses to write it to the database. A better idea would probably be to actually write some documentation - I'll get around to it eventually, I promise...

The good news is that the root password shouldn't be needed often, since the CD is set to auto-login on boot, and the security framework stuff usually doesn't ask for a password if you're root...

[Mr_Solar_Wind]

CharlesS,

If I were you I'd get those instructions off of your mac.com homepage RIGHT NOW... Apple's been known to cancel people's accounts when they publish "bad" files or information, particularly when it applies to Apple's software or copyrights...

Otherwise you might be be out of an e-mail address once the people on high get word!

Solar

[Mr_Solar_Wind]

CharlesS,

If I were you I'd get those instructions off of your mac.com homepage RIGHT NOW... Apple's been known to cancel people's accounts when they publish "bad" files or information, particularly when it applies to Apple's software or copyrights...

Otherwise you might be be out of an e-mail address once the people on high get word!

Solar

[yaro]

Congratulations Charles. This and Pacifist: the greatest Apps.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Mr_Solar_Wind:
<STRONG>CharlesS,

If I were you I'd get those instructions off of your mac.com homepage RIGHT NOW... Apple's been known to cancel people's accounts when they publish "bad" files or information, particularly when it applies to Apple's software or copyrights...

Otherwise you might be be out of an e-mail address once the people on high get word!

Solar</STRONG>

Huh? Where am I violating any Apple copyrights? What files that I am providing are "bad"?

My home page has two apps on it. One extract files from .pkg installers, and one creates a boot CD from files on the install CD (I haven't even put a reference to the new one that gets the files form the hard disk on the web page yet).

The program only copies files from an existing OS X installation. It doesn't include the files themselves, if that's what you were wondering.

[fmalloy]

I'm afraid a dummy like me needs more instruction...

I ran BootCD and it created a .dmg image after a long while. If I double-click that, Disk Copy opens and I see the volume mounted, and when I look inside I see all the OS X stuff, like mach_kernel, Applications, System, usr, etc. Great! I put in a blank CD-R and the CD mounts. I'm guessing I'm supposed to select all the OS X files and folders from the mounted volume and drag them onto the CD-R volume, then burn. However, when I do this, it fails partway into the preparing items for copy, saying something like "one or more items could not be copied, do you want to copy the rest, etc."

What am I doing wrong? Please forgive me...

[fmalloy]

Originally posted by fmalloy:
<STRONG>I'm afraid a dummy like me needs more instruction...

I ran BootCD and it created a .dmg image after a long while. If I double-click that, Disk Copy opens and I see the volume mounted, and when I look inside I see all the OS X stuff, like mach_kernel, Applications, System, usr, etc. Great! I put in a blank CD-R and the CD mounts. I'm guessing I'm supposed to select all the OS X files and folders from the mounted volume and drag them onto the CD-R volume, then burn. However, when I do this, it fails partway into the preparing items for copy, saying something like "one or more items could not be copied, do you want to copy the rest, etc."

What am I doing wrong? Please forgive me...</STRONG>

OK, figured it out...can burn directly from Disk Copy. Duh.

Now to try it out...

[T u r b o]

It doesn't work for me. Starts building the cd image file, bootcd just hangs forever. It's made an image that has 251.8MB used, then just stalls... Any ideas?
I let it run overnight just to be sure it wasn't just very slow, but this morning it was still sitting there with 'Creating CD image' or whatever that dialog says, the bar was still scrolling.

[fmalloy]

Originally posted by T u r b o:
<STRONG>It doesn't work for me. Starts building the cd image file, bootcd just hangs forever. It's made an image that has 251.8MB used, then just stalls... Any ideas?
I let it run overnight just to be sure it wasn't just very slow, but this morning it was still sitting there with 'Creating CD image' or whatever that dialog says, the bar was still scrolling.</STRONG>

Have enough disk?

[BlackGriffen]

Originally posted by fmalloy:
<STRONG>

Have enough disk?</STRONG>

If he didn't have enough disk space, he couldn't have made the .dmg file. The app gave me the spinning beach ball the whole time it ran, but it did finish. Did you check to be certain that it had stalled creating the .dmg (i.e. there weren't any more files on the disk image than before)?

BlackGriffen

[CharlesS]

That's genuinely weird. I wish I knew the answer to why it's doing that to you.

The final disk image should have closer to 300 MB on it, so if there's only 250, it's stalling somewhere while copying the files. I don't know why...

[T u r b o]

Originally posted by BlackGriffen:
<STRONG>

If he didn't have enough disk space, he couldn't have made the .dmg file. The app gave me the spinning beach ball the whole time it ran, but it did finish. Did you check to be certain that it had stalled creating the .dmg (i.e. there weren't any more files on the disk image than before)?

BlackGriffen</STRONG>

Plenty of disk free on a 60GB drive... It was definitely stalled somewhere, no new files were being created, and I checked disk usage with 'df', once it hit that 251.8MB mark it didn't use any more. It did continue to use a little bit of CPU (according to top -u) for the rest of the night.

I ran it again this morning, and it stopped at exactly the same point... Maybe a file it's looking for that's missing or something? Is there a way to get a log file out of bootcd, or maybe just some more detail?

- Mike

[barbarian]

would be nice to have a version of this that runs from OS 9 (for those folks who have disk burners that don't work under X)

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by T u r b o:
<STRONG>

Plenty of disk free on a 60GB drive... It was definitely stalled somewhere, no new files were being created, and I checked disk usage with 'df', once it hit that 251.8MB mark it didn't use any more. It did continue to use a little bit of CPU (according to top -u) for the rest of the night.

I ran it again this morning, and it stopped at exactly the same point... Maybe a file it's looking for that's missing or something? Is there a way to get a log file out of bootcd, or maybe just some more detail?

- Mike</STRONG>

I think I have a log in there if it can't copy files. Check your console. There should be some stuff showing up in there if there have been errors.

barbarian: Sorry, but an OS 9 version is not going to happen any time soon. For one thing, the app is written in Cocoa, but even if it were Carbon, there are other reasons why it would be a lot harder to do what BootCD does in OS 9.

[fmalloy]

OK, I got the CD burned correctly (I think), but my beige G3/300 MT refuses to boot from it. Particulars:

- CD contents look OK. Reported as 372.3MB used.
- CD appears in the Startup Disk System Preferences panel, identified as Mac OS X 10.1.3
- I tried booting the CD in my stock internal CD-ROM and in the SCSI CD-R
- It definitely looks at the CD, and spins briefly, then reboots to OS 9.2.2.
- I tried the "c" key, and CMD-OPT-Shift-Delete. These cause the flashing question mark
- Changing the startup disk to the CD gave the closest results: it spun for a while reading the CD, but then eventually booted into 9.2.2.

One thing seems strange: the 'mach' alias on the CD points back to my hard drive, not the CD.

[Anilam]

Originally posted by fmalloy:
<STRONG>OK, I got the CD burned correctly (I think), but my beige G3/300 MT refuses to boot from it. Particulars:

- CD contents look OK. Reported as 372.3MB used.
- CD appears in the Startup Disk System Preferences panel, identified as Mac OS X 10.1.3
- I tried booting the CD in my stock internal CD-ROM and in the SCSI CD-R
- It definitely looks at the CD, and spins briefly, then reboots to OS 9.2.2.
- I tried the "c" key, and CMD-OPT-Shift-Delete. These cause the flashing question mark
- Changing the startup disk to the CD gave the closest results: it spun for a while reading the CD, but then eventually booted into 9.2.2.

One thing seems strange: the 'mach' alias on the CD points back to my hard drive, not the CD.</STRONG>

Try disconnecting all devices before booting. I was not able to boot with my cable modem connected. Once disconnected, it booted up fine.

Guy

[T u r b o]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
<STRONG>

I think I have a log in there if it can't copy files. Check your console. There should be some stuff showing up in there if there have been errors.

barbarian: Sorry, but an OS 9 version is not going to happen any time soon. For one thing, the app is written in Cocoa, but even if it were Carbon, there are other reasons why it would be a lot harder to do what BootCD does in OS 9.</STRONG>

Checked the console, but no info there... This is all I get:

Mar 11 02:42:38 saleen authexec: executing /Volumes/Main/Downloads/BootCD.app/Contents/Resources/Mover

Mar 11 02:43:19 saleen authexec: executing /sbin/newfs_hfs

"disk2s1" ejected successfully.
"disk2s2" ejected successfully.
"disk2s3" ejected successfully.
"disk2s5" ejected successfully.
"disk2s6" ejected successfully.
"disk2s7" ejected successfully.
"disk2" ejected successfully.
"disk2s9" ejected successfully.
Mar 11 02:43:32 saleen /sbin/autodiskmount[102]: disk2s9 ??? hfs no yes Turbo's Boot CD /Volumes/Turbo's Boot CD

/dev/disk2 Apple_partition_scheme
/dev/disk2s1 Apple_partition_map
/dev/disk2s2 Apple_Driver43
/dev/disk2s3 Apple_Driver43_CD
/dev/disk2s5 Apple_Driver_ATAPI
/dev/disk2s6 Apple_Driver_ATAPI
/dev/disk2s7 Apple_Patches
/dev/disk2s9 Apple_HFS /Volumes/Turbo's Boot CD


Nothing after that... Any ideas?

- Mike

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by T u r b o:
<STRONG>

Checked the console, but no info there... This is all I get:

Mar 11 02:42:38 saleen authexec: executing /Volumes/Main/Downloads/BootCD.app/Contents/Resources/Mover

Mar 11 02:43:19 saleen authexec: executing /sbin/newfs_hfs

"disk2s1" ejected successfully.
"disk2s2" ejected successfully.
"disk2s3" ejected successfully.
"disk2s5" ejected successfully.
"disk2s6" ejected successfully.
"disk2s7" ejected successfully.
"disk2" ejected successfully.
"disk2s9" ejected successfully.
Mar 11 02:43:32 saleen /sbin/autodiskmount[102]: disk2s9 ??? hfs no yes Turbo's Boot CD /Volumes/Turbo's Boot CD

/dev/disk2 Apple_partition_scheme
/dev/disk2s1 Apple_partition_map
/dev/disk2s2 Apple_Driver43
/dev/disk2s3 Apple_Driver43_CD
/dev/disk2s5 Apple_Driver_ATAPI
/dev/disk2s6 Apple_Driver_ATAPI
/dev/disk2s7 Apple_Patches
/dev/disk2s9 Apple_HFS /Volumes/Turbo's Boot CD


Nothing after that... Any ideas?

- Mike</STRONG>

Maybe I've got a bug somewhere that causes some problem when you try putting a special character like an apostrophe in the disk's name.

Try calling it the default "Emergency Boot CD" and see what happens.

[T u r b o]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
<STRONG>

Maybe I've got a bug somewhere that causes some problem when you try putting a special character like an apostrophe in the disk's name.

Try calling it the default "Emergency Boot CD" and see what happens.</STRONG>

Tried this also, with exactly the same result...

I did notice that when it hits the point where it stops around the 250MB mark, it starts responding to events (the beachball goes away, and I can view the 'about' dialog).

- Mike

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by T u r b o:
<STRONG>

Tried this also, with exactly the same result...

I did notice that when it hits the point where it stops around the 250MB mark, it starts responding to events (the beachball goes away, and I can view the 'about' dialog).

- Mike</STRONG>

What?!

that should *definitely* not happen. Sounds like my method is exiting prematurely, leaving the progress bar up.

Hmm, I'd like to know how far it gets. Did it get to the point where you start adding applications to the CD, or did it stop before then?

Just in case your download could be corrupted, could you try downloading the app again, and see if a fresh copy fixes the problem?

If that doesn't help, could you post a directory listing of the image? You can get a directory listing by typing:

ls -R /Volumes/Emergency\ Boot\ CD

in the terminal.

[T u r b o]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
<STRONG>

What?!

that should *definitely* not happen. Sounds like my method is exiting prematurely, leaving the progress bar up.

Hmm, I'd like to know how far it gets. Did it get to the point where you start adding applications to the CD, or did it stop before then?

Just in case your download could be corrupted, could you try downloading the app again, and see if a fresh copy fixes the problem?

If that doesn't help, could you post a directory listing of the image? You can get a directory listing by typing:

ls -R /Volumes/Emergency\ Boot\ CD

in the terminal.</STRONG>

I downloaded a new copy before I re-ran it last night with the default name

It never prompts me for anything, I've never seen any sort of dialog that would add applications to the CD(?! that sounds cool)

Here are the result of a `find /Volumes/Emergency\ Boot\ CD` (it should be easier for you to find any differences with a simple diff than a ls -R, since this will list just one file on each line, with the full path):

&lt;list deleted, sorry &gt;

[ 03-18-2002: Message edited by: T u r b o ]

[sjk]

Gak! Might you replace that intrusively-long directory listing with a URL reference to it? Thanks!

[HAL9000]

Originally posted by sjk:
<STRONG>Gak! Might you replace that intrusively-long directory listing with a URL reference to it? Thanks!</STRONG>

JEZUUUUUUS, Turbo ! ! !

[CharlesS]

Sorry guys, I did indeed ask for it. Guess that wasn't the greatest idea - maybe I should have had him e-mail me a .bom file instead. Oh well, water under the bridge.

Turbo: that listing is really weird. Could you look at the following files and tell me whether they are files, folders, links, or aliases:

/Volumes/Emergency Boot CD/var
/Volumes/Emergency Boot CD/private/var
/Volumes/Emergency Boot CD/private/var/root

[T u r b o]

drwxr-xr-x 16 turbo unknown 500 Mar 15 04:02 /Volumes/Emergency Boot CD/private/var
drwxr-xr-x 2 turbo unknown 264 Mar 15 04:02 /Volumes/Emergency Boot CD/private/var/root
drwxr-xr-x 11 turbo unknown 330 Mar 15 04:04 /Volumes/Emergency Boot CD/var

And the originals:

drwxr-xr-x 18 root wheel 568 Feb 21 23:24 /private/var
drwxr-x--- 12 root wheel 364 Feb 1 00:56 /private/var/root
drwxr-xr-x 17 root wheel 534 Feb 1 02:21 /var

It would seem they're all plain directories. I gather from some of your code it's expecting /var to be symlink to /private/var? It looks like something happened on my system that caused /var to become its own directory tree on 2/1/2002, because before that logs were being dumped into /private/var/log, but now there are new files in /var/log.

Not only that, but /etc and /tmp as well... Are these all supposed to be links to /private/X ?

- Mike

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by T u r b o:
<STRONG>drwxr-xr-x 16 turbo unknown 500 Mar 15 04:02 /Volumes/Emergency Boot CD/private/var
drwxr-xr-x 2 turbo unknown 264 Mar 15 04:02 /Volumes/Emergency Boot CD/private/var/root
drwxr-xr-x 11 turbo unknown 330 Mar 15 04:04 /Volumes/Emergency Boot CD/var

And the originals:

drwxr-xr-x 18 root wheel 568 Feb 21 23:24 /private/var
drwxr-x--- 12 root wheel 364 Feb 1 00:56 /private/var/root
drwxr-xr-x 17 root wheel 534 Feb 1 02:21 /var

It would seem they're all plain directories. I gather from some of your code it's expecting /var to be symlink to /private/var? It looks like something happened on my system that caused /var to become its own directory tree on 2/1/2002, because before that logs were being dumped into /private/var/log, but now there are new files in /var/log.

Not only that, but /etc and /tmp as well... Are these all supposed to be links to /private/X ?

- Mike</STRONG>

Yep... if those are no longer symlinks to the directories in /private, it makes some of BootCD's assumptions incorrect. For flexibility, I had BootCD just copy the symlinks over instead of just creating them itself, but now I see that that may have been a bad idea. In your case, it copied some plain directories over, and the symlinks were not created. This causes your CD not to boot.

I would try deleting the folders on the root level of the Emergency Boot CD image and replacing them with symlinks (use the terminal - aliases will not work) to the appropriate folders in private. Then burn the image and tell us if it works.

[CharlesS]

Never mind... I forgot what your problem was. You can't even make the image - it's not just that the image burns an unbootable CD.

Whatever you do, do not interpret my last message to refer to your hard drive. Do not delete the /etc and /var folders from your drive!

If you feel brave, you can try moving the contents of the folders to the correct folders in /private first and then deleting the folders and replacing them with symlinks, but beware! This is pretty dangerous, and could lead to an unbootable system. Proceed at your own risk!

[sjk]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
<STRONG>Sorry guys, I did indeed ask for it.
</STRONG>

Ask and you receive... and us, too.

<STRONG>
Guess that wasn't the greatest idea - maybe I should have had him e-mail me a .bom file instead. Oh well, water under the bridge.
</STRONG>

E-mail attachments are so '90s.
Thanks for the cleanup, turbo.

[ 03-18-2002: Message edited by: sjk ]

[CharlesS]

Well, I've just updated BootCD. I finally filled in some things that should have been filled in a long time ago, including the Credits.rtf file and the versions, and I fixed a minor bug that could cause -60031 errors. Also, Takehiko Hatatani has provided a Japanese localization for us, so if there are any Japanese-speaking people using the program, you may be pleasantly surprised...

[ 03-18-2002: Message edited by: CharlesS ]

[Anilam]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
<STRONG>Well, I've just updated BootCD. I finally filled in some things that should have been filled in a long time ago, including the Credits.rtf file and the versions, and I fixed a minor bug that could cause -60031 errors. Also, Takehiko Hatatani has provided a Japanese localization for us, so if there are any Japanese-speaking people using the program, you may be pleasantly surprised...

[ 03-18-2002: Message edited by: CharlesS ]</STRONG>

Same Link??

Guy

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Anilam:
<STRONG>

Same Link??

Guy</STRONG>

Yep. Here it is again, for your convenience:
http://homepage.mac.com/csrstka/BootCD.sit

[T u r b o]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
<STRONG>Never mind... I forgot what your problem was. You can't even make the image - it's not just that the image burns an unbootable CD.

Whatever you do, do not interpret my last message to refer to your hard drive. Do not delete the /etc and /var folders from your drive!

If you feel brave, you can try moving the contents of the folders to the correct folders in /private first and then deleting the folders and replacing them with symlinks, but beware! This is pretty dangerous, and could lead to an unbootable system. Proceed at your own risk!</STRONG>

I corrected the problem with the symlinks (moved /etc and /var to /etc.old and /var.old, then linked them to /private/etc and /private/var) and the BootCD program successfully created a disc. Now to try it...

I came to OSX from a unix background, so messing around with the file system, porting apps, etc, is cake. It's UI stuff/"macisms" that usually trick me up

- Mike