Mounting an ISO Image on Linux

[scottalanmiller]

A common Linux task is to mount a locally storage ISO image as if it was another filesystem. This can be very handy for times when you need to install software from a CD or DVD image but do not have ready access to a physical drive.

First we need a place to mount the ISO image. A handy location is often under the /mnt directory as it is obvious that something odd is going to be mounted there temporarily. Let’s make a directory called /mnt/iso.

mkdir /mnt/iso

Now we have a place to mount our ISO image. In this example, the image file is just called /tmp/image.iso to make things simple. The simple “mount -o loop” command takes care of the rest.

mount -o loop /tmp/image.iso /mnt/iso

And that is it! Very nice and easy. Now you can cd into the /mnt/iso directory and browse your disc image like a normal file system. Keep in mind that the filesystem remains read-only as that is the nature of an ISO.

Originally posted in 2012 on my Linux blog at: http://web.archive.org/web/20140823021548/http://www.scottalanmiller.com/linux/2012/04/27/mounting-an-iso-image/