a Linux question regarding CD access...

lost_soul on 27/7/2011 at 07:38

I recently purchased a particular Windows game and I tried to get it running in Wine. The CD would not mount though, even though it works perfectly in Windows. Then I discovered that it *does* mount, but it is only readable by root! Every other CD I have is readable as a normal user, so WTH is with this game disk? Even when you mount it, "permission is denied" unless you're root.

The game runs fine if I run Wine as root and it sees the disk, but I would rather avoid running it as root. I didn't think CD file systems supported permissions...

Renzatic on 27/7/2011 at 09:24

That is kinda weird. On a guess, I'd say it probably has something to do with whatever copy protection scheme is on the disc. Have you tried ripping the image off the disc and mounting it to see what it does?

Al_B on 27/7/2011 at 11:58

How are you mounting the CD - via root or as a normal user? Normally filesystems (including CDs) can only be mounted as root although this may be configured otherwise in /etc/fstab. Also, have you checked the permissions of the mount point itself before and after mounting?

A final thought - what filesystem does the CD report after its been mounted? Typing "mount" in a terminal window should give you that information as well as where it's been mounted.

lost_soul on 27/7/2011 at 16:23

The file system is ISO 9660. When I insert any other disk, it mounts automatically, but this one did not show up as available in the desktop environment. I didn't think it was working at all until I tried reading it as root.

I'm tempted to take it to my buddy who has a Core I7 Macbook and see if his behaves the same way (because it is also a Unix-based OS).

SeriousCallersOnly on 27/7/2011 at 17:10

Try to install cdemu:
(http://cdemu.sourceforge.net/)

And make a (bin not iso) image and read that.

cdemu is the equivalent of deamon tools for those moronic copy protections in linux.

And yes, it's a kernel module, it needs direct access to the hardware drivers to emulate the copyprotection.

I've had a similar experience with Betrayal in Antara disc 3, that had a malformed filesystem that could only be read in windows (and yes, it was on purpose, every copy of the game has that problem).

I used a virtual machine to copy the contents to the harddrive and burned that.