Thursday, May 3, 2007

Loopy on CDs

Have an .iso file and want to see what it looks like before you burn it to a DVD or CD? Simple - use mount's "-o loop" option:



$ mkdir myiso
$ sudo mount -o loop gparted-livecd-0.3.4-6.iso myiso
$ cd myiso
$ ls -F
boot/ gparted.dat* syslinux/
$ cd ..
$ umount myiso


Now that is pretty cool! Most Linux distributions are delivered on .iso files, which are snapshots of complete CDs (or, increasingly these days, DVDs). Using software like cdrecord or k3b, you can burn the ISO to a CD. Remember - don't copy it to the CD, but rather use the option to burn the ISO as a CD. In k3b, you use the Tools->Burn CD Image... or Burn DVD ISO Image... menu selections. You can't modify anything, as it is mounted read-only, but there are ways to modify an ISO file. See this Ultimate Boot CD page for some ways to do it.




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