Mount ISO images under Linux without burning to CD/DVD

Have you ever wanted to extract or view the contents of an ISO file without burning it to CD/DVD media?

This Linux How-To will walk you though mounting the ISO file directly under Linux.

Step 1

As root, create a directory to be used for mounting the ISO. This can be named anything you wish, but should be kept relevant.

mkdir -p /mnt/iso

Step 2

Mount the ISO image to the new directory. In this example, our ISO is saved in /home/linuxlookup/ directory and named disk.iso.

mount -o loop /home/linuxlookup/disk.iso /mnt/iso

Step 3

Change to the mounted ISO directory.

cd /mnt/iso

Step 4

List the directory contents.

ls -l

Step 5

Once finished doing what you need to do, you should unmount the ISO.

umount /mnt/iso

Optional

If you're running a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu, you'll have the option to mount the ISO image directly from the desktop. Right click on the ISO image and choose Mount with Archive Mounter. You'll then see an icon appear on the desktop which allows for browsing just as if it were a regular file folder. Be sure to right click and Unmount Volume once you're done.