James N. Sears | Convert .bin + .cue -> .iso on Mac OSX

I had a need recently to convert a .bin/.cue CD Image pair to .iso for mounting on OSX. I was considering writing a quick utility to handle the task, but in the process of researching the file formats, I found BinChunker, a GPL-licensed piece of code that does exactly what I need, simply and directly. The official site has the source code and RedHat RPM's, but if you are on OSX, I did a quick compile of the latest version which you can download here.

Once you download the utility, issue this command from a shell prompt in the directory where you downloaded the file:

sudo cp bchunk /usr/bin/

This will copy the file into a location where the system can find it at will (a.k.a. the path). Then, to convert a .bin/.cue pair to a .iso, you can issue this command:

bchunk myinputfile.bin myinputfile.cue myoutputfile

Short, sweet, and simple — and lightweight too, weighing in at only 20k.

UPDATE: As commenter Frederik has pointed out, this can give a permission denied error if your user account does not have execute permissions on the file. Execute this command after copying the file to /usr/bin/ to solve this problem:

sudo chmod a+x /usr/bin/bchunk

If you are getting a not found error, make sure that /usr/bin/ is in your path. To check this, type echo $PATH and look for /usr/bin/ in the result. If it isn't there, type sudo nano /etc/profile and add /usr/bin; to the PATH=... line. Then press CTRL+x followed by Y to confirm and the enter key to verify the filename to save and exit nano. Then execute source /etc/profile to refresh the path.

Comments (7)

Fredrik:

Wow, that's really great! One problem though; whenever I try to run the command I get a permission denied error, and if I try adding sudo in front my Terminal tells me it can't find bchunk... Any leads?

Posted by Fredrik | April 15, 2007 5:36 PM

Posted on April 15, 2007 17:36

JC:

Your download link does not work ... opens up a file in the browser with a bunch of junk. Can you zip up the compiled file so it is easier to download.

Posted by JC | May 1, 2007 6:44 PM

Posted on May 1, 2007 18:44

James Nick Sears:

Done.

Posted by James Nick Sears | May 1, 2007 7:28 PM

Posted on May 1, 2007 19:28

Gwen:

Thanks for doing this. I'm still dufus when it comes to command line, so it took me a while to figure out the problem when it said 'file not found'. It was because the default directory inside the terminal was not my desktop. Being primarily a GUI user, that's where the files were sitting. I dredged up my old memories of dos (the last time I really used a command line), and was able to change the directory. I don't actually know what the desktop directory is called in OSX, so I type cd /applications/, and moved the files in there. Once I did that, everything went perfectly. Thanks again!

Posted by Gwen | May 12, 2007 4:06 AM

Posted on May 12, 2007 04:06

aaron:

I've got all the files into usr/bin now, but when i try the conversion line it says
"-bash: /usr/bin/bchunk: Bad CPU type in executable"

i'm not real sure what bash is, but as far as i can tell i followed the directions

Posted by aaron | May 22, 2007 10:30 PM

Posted on May 22, 2007 22:30

Iluvatar:

This looks like a great utility. It's running now, let's hope it works.

For any non-terminal people, a quick primer on navigation:

The main level of your harddrive is "/"

Your home directory (where your terminal will probably start) is "/Users/YourUserName/"