Medical database Vidal

[Ben Morrow]

In article <20090109184126.GA2501 at pollux2.free.local.net> you write:
> When mounting a (cd9660) CD-ROM of the medical database Vidal in order
> to try an installation with wine, I've discovered that I cannot see
> two files (visible under Windows), setup.exe and some .ini file the
> full name of which I have forgotten now, while I can perfectly see
> the merlin-vcd-data.zip file in the dat directory.
> 
> How on Unix earth is this possible ??

As you may already know, native ISO9660 (well, level 1, which is what is
usually used) only supports very limited filenames (8.3, uppercase,
every file must have a version number). As a result, a number of
extensions have been developed: Unix systems use a system called Rock
Ridge, which supports long filenames and the usual POSIX metadata; Win32
systems use a system called Joliet, which uses Unicode filenames and
supports vfat-ish metadata; Apple have their own system which supports
HFSish metadata. 

Some CDs are built with more than one extension system, in which case
there are now several completely independant directory trees on the
disc. It's perfectly possible to make the different trees contain
different files; indeed, it's possible to make the same file appear to
contain different contents under different systems. See e.g. the -hide,
-hide-joliet, -hide-hfs options to mkisofs.

I would guess that your CD has both Rock Ridge and Joliet extensions,
and that the creator has hidden the Win32-specific files from the Unix
directory tree because they thought they wouldn't be useful. If for some
reason you need to see the CD as a Win32 machine would, you can use the
-r option to mount_cd9660.

Ben