Have you ever come across an ISO you want to check out but you don’t want to burn the thing to a CD or DVD? Perhaps you’re remastering your linux distro, or you’re creating a bootable, slipstreamed WinXP install or something and you want to test it without wasting 10 DVDs in the process. Well, here’s how to do it.
First let’s make a directory to put this ISO into.
sudo mkdir /media/iso
Now, let’s add the loop module to your kernel.
sudo modprobe loop
Hey! You’re doing kernel stuff. nice! Now let’s get the ISO mounted.
sudo mount some.iso /media/iso/ -t iso9660 -o loop
Now you should have your iso file mounted, and accessible from the desktop. Want to unmount it?
sudo umount /media/iso
Easy as pie.
October 11th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
I believe you the word you’re looking for is wasting, not waisting.
October 11th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
Bob,
Indeed. Slip from a wish for my wasting waist.
October 11th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
If you’re running Solaris (I believe ver. 8 on), you use ‘lofi’ to do this instead of a loopback interface. As root:
lofiadm -a /path/to/iso
mount -F hsfs /dev/lofi/1 /mount/it/here
When done:
umount /mount/it/here
lofiadm -d /dev/lofi/1
If you mount multiple images simultaneously, the number lofi device number will change (increment).
October 11th, 2006 at 2:04 pm
Hi Nem,
Thanks for the great tip!
October 12th, 2006 at 1:57 am
But How do I burn/boot from a boot cd? install a OS from a cd?
October 15th, 2006 at 11:51 pm
Most users, especially new users to Linux, want a solution that doesn’t require use of the command prompt.
Try KDE service menus for right-click access to cd images:
http://kde-apps.org/index.php?xcontentmode=287
Or try Gnome Nautilus scripts:
http://g-scripts.sourceforge.net/