FOSSwire

There are a few occasions when you may need or want to use an ISO image without actually burning it. You may want to grab a file off of a CD, or maybe you’re storing an image of a disk for use in Wine. Using mount points, this is an easy task.

The Quick Way

On a recent GNOME desktop, opening or mounting ISO images (and other archives) is very simple. Simply right-click the image, and select Open With > Archive Mounter. Done! The image will show as a drive in Places or on your desktop.

This is the easiest way to grab a file from an image or an archive without having to open an archive manager or extract everything. But, it has its limitations. Because it is mounted under GVFS, it is typically only available on a GNOME desktop. Wine may also have trouble understanding where the image was mounted to as well, and reconfiguring Wine every time you want to change discs is no fun.

The More Reliable Way

Almost as quickly as the previous solution, you can mount the image in a terminal:

sudo mount -o loop /path/to/image.iso /media/cdrom

We’re using the CD drive location here to keep things simple: GNOME and Wine will both think that it is just a normal CD or DVD. The location of your CD drive on your filesystem may differ; check your distribution documentation for details. The -o loop option is needed because image.iso is not a block device, as the mount command would expect, but a file.

To remove the mount point again, point the umount command at the location of the CD drive:

sudo umount /media/cdrom

Bonus: The Graphical More Reliable Way

If you find yourself swapping disk images out frequently, you may find Gmountiso useful. You can easily swap out multiple images and mount points, and it works in the same manner as the mount/umount commands do.

Getting music from a CD (that you own, of course) to your favourite media player, such as Amarok, isn't always a clear process under KDE.

Amarok itself doesn't have the facility to rip CDs, as with many other media players, so using an external program is sometimes the only option. KAudioCreator is one such ripping program.

To install, you should be able to search for it in your package manager. While you're there, you might also want to snag flac, libvorbis and/or lame for encoding into FLAC, Ogg Vorbis and MP3 respectively.

Pop in an audio disc, and load up KAudioCreator.

If this is the first time, you've used the program, you'll need to first head into the configuration and set up an encoder. You'll be reminded of this through a dialogue box.

Go to Settings > Configure KAudioCreator.

Under the Encoder tab, you'll want to pick which format you want your CD extracted to (make sure you've installed the right packages for your chosen encoder). Pick the one you want.

While you're here, you might want to also choose the output folder for ripped tracks, under Encoded File Location. I've chosen to set a prefix of ~/Music.

Now you can get started ripping. The interface is a little... erm, unique, and takes some getting used to.

To simply rip all the tracks on the disc, choose Select All Tracks at the bottom of the interface, and then click the Gear icon in the toolbar to get started. Then check out the Jobs tab to watch the status of the rip and encode.

To rip only selected tracks, instead of choosing Select All Tracks, click each track individually to place a tick mark next to its name.

That's it! Once the rip is complete, you'll have a set of files.