Making Unix files on CD-RW readable to Unix?

[KG]

Here is the short version. I had some Unix Cd's [shareware] but no CD-RW
at the time to copy them with. I knew I would be gettong one, so the
quick solution was to copy the CD's using win98's drag&drop onto an
extra slave HD that I hooked up for the purpose. I now have a CD-RW,
but when I copy the files onto the CD exactly the way they came off the
original cd's, when I try to install them using SCO Openserver 5.02's
Software Manager, it won't do it because it says "unrecognizable file
format" and cannot read the cd. I still have the files as originally
copies onto the HD. I have adaptec's cdcreator which I use to make the
CD's on my CD-RW. Can anyone tell me how to create the cd's so that
they are recognizable to Unix, or am I out of luck? I truly hope I can
make this work, as there were some good programs on the CD's that I'd
really like to have. Thanks a lot for any help on this matter.
--Keith 8-)

[John Phillips]

The cd's you created with the CD-RW drive are probably not ISO-9660
format. They are probably Micro-$'s Joliet format. Snail mail them
to me and I will re-copy them to ISO-9660 format.

John Phillips
126 E. Broadway
Augusta, KS 67010-1502

--

[Warren Young]

John Phillips <jphi...@onyx.southwind.net> wrote:

>KG <a...@cwixmail.com> wrote:
>> but when I copy the files onto the CD exactly the way they came off the
>> original cd's, when I try to install them using SCO Openserver 5.02's
>> Software Manager, it won't do it because it says "unrecognizable file
>> format" and cannot read the cd. I still have the files as originally
>

>The cd's you created with the CD-RW drive are probably not ISO-9660
>format. They are probably Micro-$'s Joliet format. Snail mail them
>to me and I will re-copy them to ISO-9660 format.

Actually, Joliet _is_ ISO9660, but with extensions. What's more
likely is that the CD needs to have the Rock Ridge extensions instead.
Both extensions serve much the same purpose: to add modern filesystem
features like long file names to the DOS-oriented ISO9660 standard.
They just achieve this in different ways, and the standards don't have
a fully overlapping feature set anyway. Rock Ridge, for example,
supports symlinks, whereas MICROS~1 can't even spell symlink.

If there are TRANS.TBL files in each of the CD's directories, you know
the original disk was created with the Rock Ridge extensions. IIRC,
Adaptec Easy CD Creator doesn't support that. You may need to grab
and use the mkisofs tool (they should work under OpenServer, but no
guarantees) to create an appropriate ISO image that you can write to a
new CD-R. See ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages/mkisofs for
this tool.

Alternatively, the Adaptec software can read a pure ISO image from an
existing CD and then write it back out without diddling with the data.
That may work best of all.

Good luck,

= Warren -- http://www.cyberport.com/~tangent/