I needed to burn some files to a CD recently and had to go through some searching and trial-and-error before finding the right tools and options, so here goes what I turned out to use, for future reference:

• to build the ISO:

  mkisofs -o <image.iso> -V <volume-label> -l -J -joliet-long -R <directory>
  

  This enables the Joliet and Rocky Ridge extensions, which make the filenames look good on the disk (otherwise with plain ISO9660 they’re nastily altered).

• to burn the ISO:

  cdrecord -v -raw dev=<device> <image.iso>
  

This burns in raw mode (preferred mode according to the cdrecord man page) on the specified device (usually /dev/cdrom will do).

Note I’m using cdrtools but it should work the same with cdrkit‘s genisoimage and wodim.