UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi All:
I'm having a problem with transferring files from a CD to my AIX machine. I don't know if I am using the mount command properly. My problem is that when I take a CD that I have burned on my PC over to my AIX machine, whent the CD is mounted the file names have been changed (a more thorough explaination is below). I am using the mount command as follows: mount -v cdrfs -r /dev/cd0 /cdrom. Are my file names getting screwed up because of the mount options?

This is my problem:

I have to use Exceed to log on to a UNIX/AIX (really don't know the difference) network to grab some files. Once those files are in my UNIX folder, I get those files via FTP onto my PC. Then I burn my CD. Up to this point, all the file names remain the same. However, when I take that CD back to another UNIX/AIX machine, the file names have been changed (they are much shorter) and the extension has been reduced to 3 letters. I have several hundred files that need to be transferred in this manner and I really don't want to (even if I could) change them all individually. The changed file names and the new file names have little in common.

Read about ISO 9660 and level1 standard filenames: which is what DOS 8.3 filenames
are similar to.

I'm guessing that the system reading the CDROM has level1 ISO 9660 support and is having trouble with the long filenames.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9660

You may be better off gzipping all your files into an archive, then storing that one archive file (with a level1 name) on the CDROM.

Thanks for the help Jim. I looked through the info on wikipedia and you are right, my CD was burned in the ISO format. I went back to my CD burning software and was able to change the file system format. However, my only other options were Joliet and UDF. Joliet allows my long file names but my AIX system does not seem to have either (Joliet or UDF) of these formats available with the mount command. It also doesn't seem possible for me to gzip the files from the source system. Am I just SOL?

No.

Gzip is available for Windows free and for AIX as well (free):
http://www.gzip.org/

The only caveat - AIX may have a problem with CD files larger than 2.4GB. And some UNIX filesystems do NOT like really long filenames like (32.32) that windows will support. YMMV.