There are a couple of downsides to compressing these images: The images will not compress well because most of the files (*.rpm), already use compression internally; So you wouln't save that much space. It will also take a long time to compress these images, all depending on your systems resources. The other problem is that it some how a byte or two of the file became corrupted, then you may loose the whole file (compression utilities don't always handle corruption as well as they should. Typically, a few corrupted bytes on a disc image will not make the disc unusable.) just something to think about Lowell Alleman

-----Original Message----- From: Bernd Felsche [SMTP:bernie@innovative.iinet.net.au] Sent: Sunday, April 28, 2002 8:09 AM To: suse-linux-e@suse.com Subject: Re: [SLE] ISO backups

rnc-suse tapped away at the keyboard with:

...

For those who want to download ISOs as a backup for their CDs I offer the following idea. Create iso images directly from your CDs. Granted it takes a bit of time but is definatly less time than if you would do the download. The command I got from the April 2002 issue of Linux Journal in a neat article about creating a CD Jukebox..

cat /dev/hdx > filename Where /dev/hdx is your CD device (note: a mount is NOT required( filename is what you want to call the ISO image. Example: /usr/local/iso/suse-80-1.iso

Make 1 file for each CD and presto you have your image files in case you loose the CDs or as indicated earlier on this list.. your dog messes it up.

Good idea... I implemented a "Jukebox" about 6 months before reading article and can verify that it helps as a generic tool for all sorts of things. You can even drop those pesky driver floppies into the jukebox. Automounting works well as Samba shares as well.

One thing I haven't been game to try is to put those images on a filesystem with compression turned on. :-)

If OTOH, you don't need "live" access, then zip the image for some space saving on a conventional filesystem.

-- /"\ Bernd Felsche - Innovative Reckoning, Perth, Western Australia \ / ASCII ribbon campaign | I'm a .signature virus! X against HTML mail | Copy me into your ~/.signature / \ and postings | to help me spread!

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