Mount an ISO file in Linux
Posted by Quinn McHenry in Linux
It is convenient to mount an ISO file directly instead of burning it to a CD first. This recipe describes the command used to mount an ISO image on a Linux system.
To mount the ISO image file.iso to the mount point /mnt/test use this command:
mount -o loop -t iso9660 file.iso /mnt/test
About Quinn McHenry
Quinn was one of the original co-founders of Tech-Recipes. He is currently crafting iOS applications as a senior developer at Small Planet Digital in Brooklyn, New York.
View more articles by Quinn McHenry
View more articles by Quinn McHenry
The Conversation
Follow the reactions below and share your own thoughts.
October 16, 2008 at 12:50 pm, bob said:
You fail to explain that this command only works for root.
October 23, 2008 at 9:44 pm, JOsh said:
thank you, had not dont that before.
November 17, 2008 at 10:16 am, Amit said:
unable to mount iso file using command mentioned above as each time there is a extracted directory made in test folder
November 19, 2008 at 9:18 pm, miezebieze said:
it also works without “-t iso9660″ (mount -o loop file.iso /mnt/test)… When I tried, your command doesn’t work at all…
January 05, 2009 at 11:14 pm, Ruslanas Gzibovskis said:
your iso image file system was another
January 21, 2009 at 6:53 pm, jesla said:
works fine, how would you unmount
January 22, 2009 at 4:55 am, a$$hole said:
umount /mnt/test
February 07, 2009 at 5:35 pm, Nokie said:
eh… it says “mount: mount point /mnt/[name] does not exist”
wat do i do?
February 09, 2009 at 5:45 am, bob said:
you need to create the mount point first, i.e. “mkdir /mnt/test”
August 13, 2011 at 10:30 am, Naveen Nishad said:
mkdir -p /mnt/test
April 14, 2009 at 7:49 pm, Lawrence said:
lawrence@Inf1n1ty:~$ su
Password:
su: Authentication failure
lawrence@Inf1n1ty:~$ sudo -i
root@Inf1n1ty:~# mkdir -p /mnt/disk
root@Inf1n1ty:~# mount -o loop BF1942_1.iso /mnt/disk
BF1942_1.iso: No such file or directory
root@Inf1n1ty:~#
so when i log into root, cannot as it is locked, so use sudo to gain root privileges, Then when I go to mount the image it doesn’t find it.
Is there a certain location that I need to place the iso in question?
April 19, 2009 at 6:22 pm, michael said:
what is the path to BF1942_1.iso relative to your current directory?
Should something like
mkdir -p /mnt/disk
mount -o loop /dev/USB/BF1942_1.iso /mnt/disk
… Make any sense?
September 10, 2009 at 8:51 pm, mainmeat said:
lawrence – you arent specifying a path for your BF1942_1.iso file.
try
mkdir /mnt/foo
mount -o loop /dir/path/filename.iso /mnt/foo
that should do the trick
March 26, 2010 at 6:09 pm, jackwade said:
When you use sudo -i to turn into root, it changes your current directory to root’s home directory, /root, so you’re no longer in your old directory where you can access the file with the relative path you were using before.
October 21, 2009 at 4:15 pm, Anonymous said:
Your recipe seems like not working. I have given the command:-
mount -o loop -t iso9660 rld-dmc4.iso /media/Entertainment/Game/Devil May Cry 4 Image/
And I got the o/p:-
rld-dmc4.iso: No such file or directory
November 30, 2009 at 9:50 pm, Anonymous said:
mount: only root can do that
June 30, 2010 at 6:03 pm, X81kilo said:
thanks. and the comments below about only using root was also helpful.
August 21, 2010 at 2:08 pm, vps-hosting-online said:
Not working
October 10, 2010 at 6:25 am, Guest said:
it doesnt because they have made a daemon tools lite for linux yet.
i “mounted an .iso and it opened like a folder not like a cd-rom. i am trying to like linux but it just does NOT measure up.
November 06, 2010 at 7:00 pm, joe said:
Linux measures up, and linux doesn’t measure up, depending on who’s using it
it doesn’t “open like a folder,” /mnt/test would = say “E:” (or whatever your cd is on windows)
/ is just the start of your root partition, but if you look at your actual cdrom, the /cdrom(or whatever you have) is just a link to /mnt/cdrom, so there’s not really a difference between /mnt/cdrom and /mnt/test, not anymore than there is between e:(real cd drive) and f:(daemon tools fake cd drive)
November 06, 2010 at 7:02 pm, Joe said:
sorry, meant to say / is start of base system
June 26, 2011 at 3:29 pm, Hgfd said:
bunch of effing noobs – “I don’t linux! – your tutorial doesn’t work it says no such file or directory” … effing depressing.
June 26, 2011 at 3:29 pm, Hgfd said:
bunch of effing noobs – “I don’t linux! – your tutorial doesn’t work it says no such file or directory” … effing depressing.
July 14, 2011 at 5:37 am, Roshan said:
mount -o loop /path where u r file /Mount point
August 30, 2011 at 6:49 am, Ace said:
what to do if my direction have spaces in its name?
like: /media/Data/Pc Isos/lala.iso
i had to change Pc Isos to isos to make it work.
but is there another way?
August 30, 2011 at 12:37 pm, qmchenry said:
@Ace – you can wrap any filename that has spaces with “double quotes” and the OS will treat it all as one filename. When I grab a url from the web, for example, that I’m going to download via command line with curl or wget, I always wrap my pasted content with quotes since things like ampersands really mess with unix shells.
You can also precede a space with a backslash, so /media/Data/Pc\ Isos/lala.iso will also work, but the quotes are usually easier.
September 21, 2012 at 3:00 pm, Slim said:
root# mount -o loop (place with my file/filename).iso (place to be mounted)
mount: you must specify the filesystem type
I used this commant for mounting already with no problem, but this time I had just .bin file witch I converted to .iso by manualy made .cue and bchunk. Does anybody know where is problem and how can I fix it? Any idea?
December 12, 2012 at 1:00 am, Ganaa said:
Yes, it works fine, thank you