How to Create, Mount, and Burn ISO Images on Linux

Linux has many tools for mounting, creating and burning iso image files. In this posts, I will introduce how to use the iso files on Linux. The tools we used in this post are mount, genisoimage and wodim.

1. Mount an iso image file

Mounting an iso on Linux is straightforward. We mount the iso file as a loop block device.

# mount -o loop your-iso-file /mnt/mount-to-here

To umount it:

# umount /mnt/mount-to-here

2. Creating an iso image file

The genisoimage tool can handle iso image generation well:

$ genisoimage -R -J -joliet-long -iso-level 4 -o image.iso  dirs/

If some files in the iso is larger than 4GB, the -allow-limited-size will be needed.

3. Burning iso image file to CD/DVD

We can use wodim to burn iso images to CD/DVD:

# wodim dev='/dev/scd0'  image.iso

To list the possible devices:

$ wodim --devices