Hi scottman, sorry if this has already been addressed but I couldn't find any reference in this thread - I'm convinced that the version of Isomaster in Akita is faulty (I'm testing with Akita 14 beta). It seems to carry a bug that has been in all of the 4.20 series pups. In short, isomaster creates an iso which seems good, and burns ok, but when used to boot generates the following message:
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ISOLINUX 3.63 2008-04-10 isolinux: Image checksum error, sorry....
Boot failed: press any key to retry
I suspect this may only occur with certain isos, but I have not isolated it further yet. I can generate the failure consistently with the particular iso I am remastering and it seems to be the same fault that is referenced in these posts:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=41101
http://208.109.22.214/puppy/viewtopic.p ... f30d411117
As far as I can tell the fault is triggered by the byte length of certain files in the iso, but the real culprit is the version of isomaster not being able to cope with those different file lengths.
If I use pup 431 to do the isomaster step it works perfectly, but if I use Akita14b isomaster I consistently create an iso that burns perfectly to an unbootable coaster. I suspect that you have not seen this fault because you probably always use woofy, and that obviously uses a different method of assembling the iso which avoids the "byte boundary" issue. Various posts also suggest that using the cli to manually do a mkiso works perfectly, but that doesn't help anyone who tries to use isomaster.
In the hope that you (or anyone...) has time to verify what I am saying (and hopefully identify a suitable version of Isomaster to replace the current one) here is the exact procedure I am using to consistently repeat the failure:
1) Download TurbopupAlpha3a from here:
https://ia801009.us.archive.org/4/items ... lpha3a.iso
(Save a copy of it on an external drive for later testing with the isomaster in pup431)
Boot Akita and copy this iso into /root.
2) Mount the iso and copy the pup_420turbo.sfs from the iso into /root (then unmount the iso)
3) Unsquash the sfs as follows:
(a directory called squashfs-root is created and populated with the files from the expanded sfs)
Delete the original pup_420turbo.sfs from /root (to make room for the new one)
Reform the sfs (without making any changes) as follows:
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mksquashfs squashfs-root pup_420turbo.sfs
(This creates a new sfs that in theory should be exactly the same as the original one because we made no changes. In fact it seems to be slightly different in size, but ignore that as it does not affect the final functionality [even though it is this difference that probably triggers the faulty isomaster to be revealed...].
Save a copy of this new sfs on an external drive so that we can use it for further testing later
Start isomaster, look for the alpha3a iso in /root and doubleclick it so that you can see the contents displayed in the lower pane.
Click the pup_420turbo.sfs in the lower pane, then click "remove" so that the original sfs is now gone from the bottom pane.
In the upper pane (ie: displaying /root) click on the newly created pup_420turbo.sfs then click "add" so that it gets added into the lower pane.
Choose "file, save as" and save the new iso project as something like TurbopupAlpha3a_unsquashed_resquashed_isomastered.iso
Burn the iso to CD and try to boot from it. See if you get the same error as I do.
If so, try doing the last step again, but using puppy431 (which must have a different version of isomaster) ie: Boot into puppy 431, then add the TurbopupAlpha3 iso into /root and also copy the newly created sfs (which you made an external backup of...) into /root, and run isomaster again using the same method. In my testing the 431 isomaster copes perfectly with the files that Akita isomaster could not handle, and the CD burns and boots perfectly.
Hope you are still with me after all that ...
It would be great if you were able to verify this bug and incorporate a fix in the next version of Akita. (I'm hoping it is as simple as borrowing the isomaster from pup431). I think this bug created all sorts of problems for people who tried to remaster their 420 series pups and probably turned more than a few people off that version. Fortunately it looks like woofy came to the rescue, but still, I want to improve my remastering the more manual way first so I can understand how it all fits together...