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If you've encountered a .bin
file and were wondering how to mount it on a Linux box, the iat
tool is the answer you've been waiting for. (It's been around for a long time, but hey! You only look for something if you need it and that's why I am writing this post now :P )
The iat
tool allows you to convert from .bin
to .iso
which you can then mount on your Linux box with ease. According to it's man
page, iat
allows for conversion from many CD-ROM image file formats, such as BIN
,MDF
,PDI
,CDI
,NRG
and B5I
to ISO-9660
To install iat
on Ubuntu machines: (Other distro users may want to search their repos
sudo apt-get install iat
The syntax for using iat
is extremely straight-forward:
iat source.bin target.iso
For example, if I were to convert an Ubuntu CD-ROM image from BIN
to ISO-9660
(even though Ubuntu is nice enough to provide us with .iso
files), I'd use:
iat ubuntu-12.04-desktop-i386.bin ubuntu-12.04-desktop-i386.iso
and the .iso
file would be created in the same directory in a few seconds depending on the size of the source file.
You can mount the file using nautilus
, the default file browser on your system as well. Just right-click on the file, and choose the option Open with Archive Mounter. Now you'll see the drive mounted in the sidebar. After using it, you can unmount it like you'd do with any other device, by clicking the Eject button.
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Step 1: Setup a mount point:
I usually have one directory in my /mnt
to mount .iso
files for temporary usage. So let's go ahead and create one. You'll need to use sudo
to have permissions to create directories in /mnt
and to mount the iso file.
nits@excalibur:~$ sudo mkdir -p /mnt/temp_disc
[sudo] password for nits:
Step 2: Mounting the iso at the mount point:
To mount an .iso
file we use the loop
option in mount. So, we do something like,
nits@excalibur:~$ sudo mount -o loop ubuntu-12.04-desktop-i386.iso /mnt/temp_disc
mount: warning: /mnt/temp_disc seems to be mounted read-only.
The .iso
file is now mounted, but as a read-only. This is more than enough to copy files from the mounted drive for other usage.
nits@excalibur:~$ ls -la /mnt/temp_disc/
total 2490
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 2048 Apr 23 2012 .
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Jan 5 11:17 ..
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 134 Apr 23 2012 autorun.inf
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 2048 Apr 23 2012 boot
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 2048 Apr 23 2012 casper
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 2048 Apr 23 2012 .disk
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 2048 Apr 23 2012 dists
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 2048 Apr 23 2012 install
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 18432 Apr 23 2012 isolinux
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4237 Apr 23 2012 md5sum.txt
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 2048 Apr 23 2012 pics
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 2048 Apr 23 2012 pool
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 2048 Apr 23 2012 preseed
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 231 Apr 23 2012 README.diskdefines
lr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 1 Apr 23 2012 ubuntu -> .
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 2502608 Apr 19 2012 wubi.exe
Step 3: Unmount the mounted iso file:
nits@excalibur:~$ sudo umount /mnt/temp_disc/
Cross-posted from Nitin's blog
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