How can i mount a ISO Image CD ?

Wed Jul 21 22:15:47 2004 How can i mount a ISO Image CD ?
Posted by Tony Lawrence
Search Keys: image,loopback,mount,iso
Referencing: /Bofcusm/217.html

You have an image of a CD or perhaps of a floppy disk. You may have downloaded it, or created it by reading a real device with "dd". Now you want to mount that image. You could write it back out to media and mount that, but that may not be convenient or even possible at the moment.

If you are using Linux, the "loopback" device is what lets you do this. It can be as simple as:

mount -o loop -t iso9660 filename.iso /mnt/iso
 

but it can also be more complicated if you instead have a dd of a disk: see http://talk.trekweb.com/~jasonb/articles/linux_loopback.shtml

SCO has a "marry" command which serves a similar purpose:

You may also find the "bind" option useful: Linux mount --bind

marry -a /tmp/image
mount /dev/marry/tmp/image /mnt
 

John Dubois has a "mountfile" script for SCO that hides all the nasty details: ftp://ftp.armory.com/pub/admin/mountfile

Solaris has a "lofiadm" command that is very similar:

 lofiadm -a image
 mount -o ro -F hsfs /dev/lofi/1 /mnt
 

and BSD has "vnconfig" which again is very similar.

Mac OS X does it a little differently, using "hdid" to associate a device with an image; see an example at Sample Test Creation

Windows? Darned if I know (but see comment below from Marc).

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Thu Sep 6 17:51:03 2007: Subject: Mounting a .iso on Windows   Marc


Here's how to mount a .iso on Windows:

http://marc.abramowitz.info/archives/2007/09/06/mounting-an-iso-file-in-windows/

Basically, you use a free utility called Virtual Clone Drive ( http://www.elby.ch/fun/software/index.html).



Thu Sep 6 18:02:03 2007: Subject:   TonyLawrence


Thanks, Marc: that helps!

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