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Javad
Asked: 2013-08-10 17:00:36 +0800 CST

Burning files and directories with long unicode names

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Is there any CD/DVD burning app/ISO format which supports files and directories with long non-English (unicode) names? Apparently Joliet-long ISO standard supports filename up to 103 characters, but I'm not sure if it supports unicode as well, and if Brasero or any other Gnome app can burn DVDs with this format. I found out that an app called gBurner does quite a decent job, but unluckily it's a Win app.

I have to burn the contents of my external HDD, but since my data contains many downloaded pages (with companion HTML pages' directories containing pictures, JS scripts, CSS styles, and so on) and since many of those filenames contain non-English characters, I need some app/format to be capable of burining them safely on a DVD (without the old-fashioned need to compress the contents under a English filename), such that the content is readable on Linux and Win machines.

burning

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    GUI Application

    k3b is able to create ISO Level 3 filesystem CD's with Joliet-long. To install type in Terminal:

    apt-get install k3b

    Unfortunately k3b is an KDE application so this will install lots of (unwanted) dependencies on your machine. So you might rather use the command line alternative.

    Command Line

    mkisofs can create .iso files with Joliet-long which can be burned with every other application (e.g. Brasero)

    mkisofs -iso-level 3 -J -joliet-long -rock -input-charset utf-8 -o project.iso /path/to/files

    In Brasero press Burn image select the project.iso and hit burn.

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  2. The mkisofs command given here indeed produces a filesystem that will be able to show quite long and exotic names on Linux and MS-Windows.

    You need a Joliet tree for seeing the correct names on MS-Windows. Linux will use the Rock Ridge extension.

    Joliet is encoded in UTF-16 which is a form of Unicode. Prescribed maximum name length is 64 chracters (= 128 byte). The space in the directory entry would take up to 103 characters.

    Rock Ridge has no specific character set. A file name can have 255 bytes of length. It will copy the name bytes as stored in the filesystem tree. UTF-8 is fully ok.

    ISO level influences maximum name length in the ISO 9660 directory tree. Level 1 demands DOS style names (plus addon characters), level 2 and 3 restrict name length to 30 freely choosable characters, plus mandatory dot and semicolon, plus version number 1 to 32767. But that is of few interest. Linux and MS-Windows will use the info from Rock Ridge resp. Joliet.

    Level 3 allows data files of 4 GiB or larger. Beware: At least older mkisofs versions spoil their copy of large data files. Make a test with your installed mkisofs, if you have files of 4 GiB or larger.

    I would propose to use my own program xorriso rather than mkisofs

    xorriso -for_backup \
        -outdev /dev/sr0 \
        -blank as_needed \
        -joliet on \
        -map /path/to/files /

    This will blank the CD, DVD, or BD in drive /dev/sr0 if the medium is not yet blank resp. occupied by an ISO filesystem that shall be overwritten. It will copy the tree under /path/to/files on hard disk to a tree under the / directory of the ISO fileystem. Then it will create the ISO filesystem with Joliet and Rock Ridge and burn it to the blank medium.

    There will be MD5 checksums added for superblock, directory tree, whole image, and each single data file. You may verify the burn success of the overall image by

    xorriso -for_backup -indev /dev/sr0 -check_media --

    or check each single data file by

    xorriso -for_backup -indev /dev/sr0 -check_md5_r sorry / --
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