Working with ISO's
 

I downloaded SmoothWall, in ISO format. I don't have a burner on the box running linux, so I was hoping someone could point me in the right direction on how to access/install the Smoothwall app or decomp from ISO, etc.

Well, it is certainly possible to mount an .iso image just like it was a partition or drive (except that isos are read-only). You can mount the iso, then copy the files out of it to another directory and access them there. The usual way, assuming that you've created a directory called /mnt/iso, is to run a command like this:
where filename.iso is your SmoothWall iso file and where /mnt/iso is where you'll look to access the files contained therein.
More help is available around here for mounting .iso images, should you need it :)

hth,
-Laura

thanks for responce i decided to overwrite previous install of winxp pro w/apache, with Redhat 9 pro. and am still configuring settings ive realized i like the feal of red hat and though im still starting i like the feal and control i pertain, oh yea i have a question, how does the hole dsn server aplication work because i was just using one i got from dyndns.org, yea and in my oppinion though people state that free bsd contains much better performance oposed to a traditional linux distro when it comes to server software i think a linux build works better but that is just my oppinion....

*wow* ummm....ok. This might have been better posted in another thread, but let's see:
the dyndns.org thing allows you to keep a webserver running on your own machine even if you've got a dynamic IP by constantly updating your IP in its records (or something like that). Normal webservers run on machines which have a static IP.

The BSDs are renowned for being the most secure (OpenBSD in particular), but since I haven't gotten around to installing OpenBSD on anything yet I'm honestly not sure what the exact matchup is. Keep your Linux install up-to-date and patched, and it should be just fine ^_^

Does that sort of answer your questions?

Welcome :)
-Laura

yea sry i realized i was in wrong thread afterwords, yet again sry.... im still new to linux and havent gotten the realization that im not in windows yet lol.....

hehe...perfectly alright ^_^

Hey guys,

I was reading your posts because I had a similar question.

I wanted to mount several ISO images so I could access the info on them. I followed your advice on mounting the ISOs
but wanted them permanently, even after reboot. So I tried modifying the fstab file.

The syntax is different, however, and this is what I got out of it so far:
During bootup it told me to try using so I incorporated it into that line in fstab.

Needless to say it didn't work. Am I missing an option? The man page on fstab says I can omit the 5th and 6th field but I must be using the 4th field wrong.

Help. Thanks in advance,
ian

Hmm...I've been looking around a bit, and can't find much to say on mounting an ISO at boot time. However, how important is it that those files stay in ISO form? If you've got the space, I'd suggest just mounting them one day while you're up and running, and cp -R everything in them to a folder on your hard drive.
You could then burn the ISOs for safety's sake and delete them from your drive.

@tumana
Were actually none of the ISO's mounted during bootup or just not all? If the latter, maybe the number of the loop-back devices is insufficient on your system <long-shot-mode-off> ;)

First of all thank you for the replies...

I am mounting my Mandrake ISO images so that anytime a CD is needed to install a package, it just requests the ISO images instead of the CD (FYI).

However, none of my ISO images mounted correctly at bootup. By having the in there, like you were mounting it from the command line, it doesn't error but it also doesn't mount them!?

If I take the out it errors asking for type comment.

I will read up a little bit more and if I find the correct syntax I'll post here for others.

In the mean time, if anybody has the answer please tell me.

ian

Ok so a little more research proved useful. Here is my solution to those who are trying to mount an ISO image onto their machines.

By now we know that using this line at the command line will mount an ISO image.

The problem is that if you power down/reboot your machine, Linux will unmount that ISO image and you'll have to remount it.

If you want it there after rebooting your machine you will have to either enter the command line above or have Linux do it for you. /etc/fstab holds every filesystem that should be mounted during bootup. Make a new line in that file (as root) for the ISO images you want to be mounted. Ensure you make the new lines after the local HDDs (Hard Disk Drive... not hdd) get mounted. You most probably have the ISOs on your HDD so you will have to mount them first.

Here is the line you can put in /etc/fstab to mount ISO images at bootup. It works with every one of my 7 Mandrake ISO images.

Hope this will help other newbies,
ian

Thank you. :)

will redo /etc/fstab (if I remember correctly, else man mount), so after the changes no reboot is necessary and a simple will show whether the trick worked (i.e. no typos...;))

Lots of coolness above, but I've got a question:

Is there any advantage to using iso's mounted by loopback over having the files in a directory on the harddrive? Is it any faster, smaller, better?

I'm wanting to never again insert a Mandrake 9.1 cd in my drive. I've got the 3 iso images on my big drive, and have sucessfully mounted the 1st cd as a loopback iso image. I've also gotten the source repository set up to see it as the 1st install cd. I'm having mystery problems with the 2nd cd, however. But since I've got the space for the iso's, couldn't I just copy the contents of the cds to a directory on my big drive, and set up the repository to point to it?

Am I missing something?

if you don't want to mess up your fstab with that stuff, add a line in your rc.local with the mount command.

you're not missing anything. do it whichever way appeals to you. copy or loopback.