Less is more for ISOs

I was tidying up some data recently and found a couple of ISO images lying around with cryptic file names. I didn’t have cdinfo installed, so I though I’d run less hoping that the binary data would have some useful text in it. Instead I was surprised to see the following:

CD-ROM is in ISO 9660 format
System id: LINUX
Volume id: Ubuntu-Server 9.10 i386
Volume set id: 
Publisher id: 
Data preparer id: 
Application id: GENISOIMAGE ISO 9660/HFS FILESYSTEM CREATOR
   (C) 1993 E.YOUNGDALE (C) 1997-2006 J.PEARSON/J.SCHILLING 
   (C) 2006-2007 CDRKIT TEAM
Copyright File id: 
Abstract File id: 
Bibliographic File id: 
Volume set size is: 1
Volume set sequence number is: 1
Logical block size is: 2048
Volume size is: 327972
El Torito VD version 1 found, boot catalog is in sector 1804
Joliet with UCS level 3 found
Rock Ridge signatures version 1 found
Eltorito validation header:
    Hid 1
    Arch 0 (x86)
    ID ''
    Key 55 AA
    Eltorito defaultboot header:
        Bootid 88 (bootable)
        Boot media 0 (No Emulation Boot)
        Load segment 0
        Sys type 0
        Nsect 4
        Bootoff 704 1796

/.disk
/README.diskdefines
<snip>File system listing</snip>

Looks like less runs isoinfo -f -R -J -i ubuntu-9.10-server-i386.iso. So I did have the tools I needed installed, I just didn’t know it yet :).