Mount an ISO CD Image in Solaris

Mount an ISO CD Image in Solaris

Sun Solaris UNIX has lofi loopback file driver. The lofi file driver exports a file as a block device. Reads and writes to the block device are translated to reads and writes on the underlying file. This is useful when the file contains a file system image (such as ISO image). Exporting it as a block device through the lofi file driver allows normal system utilities to operate on the image through the block device like mount and fsck. This is useful for accessing CD-ROM and FAT floppy images.

lofiadm is command you need to use mounting an existing CD-ROM image under Sun Solaris UNIX.

Mounting an Existing ISO CD-ROM Image under Solaris UNIX: 

If your image name is solaris.iso, you can type command:

# lofiadm -a /path/to/solaris.iso

Output:

/dev/lofi/1    --> the file name argument on lofiadm must be fully qualified and the path must be absolute not relative

/dev/lofi/1 is the device, use the same to mount iso image with mount command:

# mount -o ro -F hsfs /dev/lofi/1 /mountpoint
# cd /mountpoint

use this single command to do both the job:

mount -F hsfs -o ro `lofiadm -a /path/to/image.iso` /mountpoint

Unmount and detach the images : 

unmount image:

# umount /mountpoint

Now remove/free block device:

# lofiadm -d /dev/lofi/1

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