From what I can tell, the problem is that an iso is not a filesytstem. The mount command cannot create a file system, just interpret it. I think the problem is that we need something that can make an ISO file be interpreted or perceived as a device-filesystem. The mount command cannot do it for us....

If your program does a major minor check this thought will for sure fail. But I was just philosophing ...When you mount it as loop device, assume you get next available loop device :MOUNTED=$(losetup -f), how about having your software pointing to the /dev/$MOUNTED.. The major and minor of this will reflect a loopdev and not a CD or DVD, but then again the underlying file will reflect DVD... I have no idea about it but just a thought.

DVD contents resides on a ISO9660 filesystem. We can have 2 different views of these contents:

1. An ISO image, i.e. like your hard disk partition.
2. The individual files (e.g. VOB file), i.e. like the files in yours file system.

The "mount" command allows you to mount the former into the latter, hence it only supports a directory for the second argument. But, you already have the ISO file, and the application also expects an ISO file. So what do you actually want?

First we remove /dev/dvd by "mv /dev/dvd /dev/dvd.bk". Then, 2 possibilities depending on what your application expects:

1. The application expects the image to be in /dev/dvd. Then, simple. Just "ln -s /path/to/file.iso /dev/dvd", and it is done.
2. The application expects the image to be in /dev/dvd, plus that it is a device. Then you can use "losetup /dev/dvd /path/to/file.iso". "losetup" is actually what the system does automatically when you do "mount -o loop".

Of course, in both cases, you need to revert /dev/dvd from /dev/dvd.bk after use.

hey, thanks for the "dvd://path/to/dvd.iso", it worked great for me with xine. It would be awesome if someone patched xine and other media players to be able to open ISOs with this method, through the gui, but then again, there's no real way to tell if an iso is a movie or not. Anyways, I've always just resorted to adding all the files on a mounted iso to a playlist, then seeking through all of it to try and find the actual movie...this is a MUCH better option. Again, Thanks!

Generally speaking this works well for me:
you might try with loop=/dev/cdrom ... and eventually remove sudo (depends on your distribution and user rights) ... and eventually do a beforehand if it doesn't work.

hope this helps.

Couldn't find a delete button, the solution I had in mind was mostly covered in the previous losetup post and should work.

# find suitable mount point
ls /media
# if no dvd then
sudo mkdir -t /media/dvd

# find cd or dvd drive
ls -l /dev | grep cdrom
# will say something like 'lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 2011-02-02 20:40 cdrom -> sr0'
# so use /dev/sr0

# edit /etc/fstab
sudo gedit /etc/fstab
# add line 'DevicePath MountPath FileSystemSwitches'
/dev/sr0 /media/dvd udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0

reboot

# if the cd/dvd is not visible in Nautilus make a shortcut to eject the cd/dvd
# create shell script to toggle cd/dvd eject, save in save place like root of profile /home/ME/dvdToggle.sh
# make sure to put the shebang as the first line in the script #!/bin/sh

#!/bin/sh
eject -T

# Make script executable

# click and drag the executable shell script to the upper menu bar to make a shortcut, change the icon as desired.