=============================================================================== ISO/IEC 9660:1999 Cookbook =============================================================================== Creation date: 2008-Jan-14 Author: Vreixo Formoso _______________________________________________________________________________ Contents: --------- 1. References 2. General 3. Features 4. Implementation 5. Known implementation bugs and specification ambiguities/problems ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. References: ISO/IEC DIS 9660:1999(E) "Information processing. Volume and file structure of CD­-ROM for Information Interchange" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. General ISO 9660:1999, also known as ISO-9660 version 2 is an update of the old ISO 9660:1988 standard for writing data images for CD. In the same way Joliet does, it is based on a Secondary Volume Descriptor (that is called Enhanced Volume Descriptor), that provides a second tree where the new file information is recorded. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Features It makes some improvements with respect to ECMA-119, mainly related to relax the constraints imposed by its predecessor. - It removes the limit to the deep of the directory hierarchy (6.8.2.1). However, it still keep a limit to the path length, of 255 characters as in ECMA-119. - File names don't need the version number (;1) anymore, and the "." and ";", used as SEPARATORS for extension and version number, have no special meaning now. - The file name max length is incremented to 207 bytes. - The file name is not restricted to d-characters. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. Implementation ISO 9660:1999 is very similar to old ISO 9660:1988 (ECMA-119). It needs two tree hierarchies: one, identified by the Primary Volume Descriptor, is recorded in the same way that an ECMA-119 structure. The second structure is identified by a Enhanced Volume Descriptor (8.5). The structure is exactly like defined in ECMA-119, with the exceptions named above. Thus, to write an ISO 9660:1999: - First 16 blocks are set to 0. - Block 16 identifies a PVD (8.4), associated with a directory structure written following ECMA-119. - It is needed a Enhanced Volume descriptor to describe the additional structure. It is much like a SVD, with version number set to 2 to identify this new version. - We can also write boot records (El-Torito) and additional SVD (Joliet). - We write a Volume Descriptor Set Terminator (8.3) - We write directory structure and path tables (L and M) for both ECMA-119 tree and enhanced tree. Path table record and directory record format is the same in both structures. However, ECMA-119 is constrained by the usual restrictions. - And write the contents of the files. Interchange levels 1, 2 and 3 are also defined. For PVD tree, they have the same meaning as in ECMA-119. For EVD tree, in levels 1 and 2 files are restricted to one file section (i.e., 4 GB filesize limit). In level 3 we can have more than one section per file. Level 1 does not impose other restrictions than that in the EVD tree. It seems that both El-Torito and Joliet can coexist in a ISO 9660:1999 image. However, Joliet has no utility at all in this kind of images, as it has no benefit over ISO 9660:1999, and it is more restrictive in filename length. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. Known implementation bugs and specification ambiguities/problems - While the specification clearly states that the tree speficied by the Primary Volume Descriptor should remain compatible with ISO-9660 (ECMA-119), i.e., it should be constrained by ECMA-119 restrictions, some image generation applications out there just make both Primary and Enhanced Volume Descriptors to point to the same directory structure. That is a specification violation, as for a) the directory hierarchy specified in the Primary Volume Descriptor doesn't follow the restrictions specified in the specs, and b) the same directories are part of two different hiearchies (6.8.3 "A directory shall not be a part of more than one Directory Hierarchy."). Thus, we should keep two trees as we do with Joliet. Or are there strong reasons against this? - It's not very clear what characters are allowed for files and dir names. For the tree identified in the Enhanced Volume Descriptor, it seems that a "sequence of characters rather than d-characters or d1-characters" is allowed. It also seems that the charset is determined by the escape sequence in the EVD. Anyway, leaving escape sequence to 0 and use any user-specified sequence (such as UTF-8) seems a good solution and is what many other applications do. Linux correctly mounts the images in this case. - It is not clear if RR extensions are allowed in the tree identified by the Enhanced Volume Descriptor. However, it seems not a good idea. With 207 bytes filenames and XA extensions, there is no place for RR entries in the directory records of the enhanced tree. In my opinion, RR extension should be attached to the ECMA-119 tree that must also be written to image.