how to create ISO and hide certain files

Question

I am a newbie here and my apologies if I am posting a question which has been answered many times in a another thread.

I did my homework find some relevant information But could not. Thanks for reading.

I am trying to create a ISO image of my executable By hiding few files off the ISO immage as i want the user only to see an EXE and not the other directories when they open in a PC (Windows) is the targeted ENV in which my users will launch the application.

Answer 1

If you have a set of directories that you want to incorporate into a ISO file you can do it using this command:

% mkisofs -o ~/my_iso.iso -r -J -hide-rr-moved -V "Title of ISO" \
       -graft-points "Directory1/=/home/me/dir1" "Directory2/=/home/me/dir2"

The above command switches are as follows:

-o = name of output .iso file
-r = set permissions to 0
-J = output's ISO using Joliet format (useful for Windows users of the final ISO)
-V = Volume ID

-hide-rr-moved = hides the directory RR_MOVED to .rr_moved
-graft-points = specifies names of locations in ISO and what goes into 
                them from local system

Hiding files

I believe you could modify the above and add the switch -hide-joliet <pattern>. This will filter any files matching the <pattern>. For example:

% mkisofs -o ~/my_iso.iso -r -J -hide-rr-moved -V "Title of ISO" \
       -hide-joliet *files_to_ignore* \
       -graft-points "Directory1/=/home/me/dir1" "Directory2/=/home/me/dir2"

NOTE: --hidden can also be used to "hide" files. But both these switches are a misnomer. The files are still present on the disk and anyone with admin rights can see them on the disk. There's an attribute that is set on the ISO file system noting whether a file is hidden or not. This hidden facility is MS-DOS and Windows command specific!

NTFS attributes

The OP had several questions regarding NTFS file system attributes such as H (Hidden) & S (System Files).

The attributes, including:

• H - hidden
• S - System
• etc.

... are file system attributes that are part of NTFS (These aren't part of the file itself). These attributes aren't directly supported by Joliet/UDF. I believe the NTFS attributes are applied (in this case only hidden is supported) to the UDF/Joliet file system in the ISO.

Answer 2

That depends on what software you use to create the image. mkisofs has several options concerning hiding files, but I think the one you need is -hidden:

  -hidden glob
          Add the hidden (existence) ISO-9660 directory attribute for glob.  This attribute will prevent glob from
          being  listed  on  DOS  based systems if the /A flag is not used for the listing.  glob is a shell wild-
          card-style pattern that must match any part of the filename or path.  In  order  to  match  a  directory
          name, make sure the pathname does not include a trailing '/' character.  Multiple globs may be hidden.

Since it's a somewhat esoteric feature, it might not be available through a graphical frontend if you use one.