How to work with windows catalog files (catroot/nt5.cat)?

resistance has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi

windows OS has catalog files in system32\CatRoot folder with SHA1 signatures of system files. The CAT-files are in binary format, I cannot find any information about structure of these files.
I need to access this information with perl or dump content (file -> hash). There are no such module on CPAN. I cannot use Win API because I need access these files from linux.
Any ideas?

Comment on How to work with windows catalog files (catroot/nt5.cat)?

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Re: How to work with windows catalog files (catroot/nt5.cat)? by ikegami (Patriarch) on Jun 09, 2008 at 07:08 UTC
I cannot use Win API because I need access these files from linux. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you actually need access to the info within these files from linux. If you know how to access this data from the Windows API, it might be easier to extract the info using a program on Windows which either serves the data or dumps the data in a format you prefer.	[reply]
Re^2: How to work with windows catalog files (catroot/nt5.cat)? by resistance (Beadle) on Jun 15, 2008 at 01:29 UTC
@ikegami: you are right I'll try this way Wine: its seems wine have stub instead of working functions, but anyway thanks for idea.	[reply]
Re: How to work with windows catalog files (catroot/nt5.cat)? by pc88mxer (Vicar) on Jun 09, 2008 at 12:07 UTC
You might ask the Wine folks. In their version of `mscat.h` they have some definitions for this part of the Windows API.	[reply] [d/l]