How to mount an ISO image under Solaris

Published 15 Oct 2011 Read time 1 min 13 sec(s) (2358 views). Solaris

Mounting an ISO image on Solaris

As 'root' or a user with elevated priviledges perform the following:

Assign a loopback device to the ISO image using lofiadm:
```
lofiadm -a <path-to-iso-image>
```
For example:
```
server# lofiadm -a /var/tmp/sol-10-u8-ga-x86-dvd.iso
/dev/lofi/1
```
From the above output, we have the lookback device assigned to /dev/lofi/1
Mount the ISO image (loopback device) as a read-only filesystem:
```
mount -F hsfs -o ro <loopback-device> <mountpoint>
```
For example, to mount /dev/lofi/1 under /mnt:
```
server# mount -F hsfs -o ro /dev/lofi/1 /mnt
```

Presenting ISO images to Guest zones

There is no direct way to mount an ISO image on a Solaris Zone. However, you can mount an ISO image onto the global zone using the above steps, and then present it to the guest zone using:

mount -F lofs <mountpoint> <path-to-zone-root>

For example:

global# mount -F lofs /mnt /zones/guestzone/root/mnt

where: /zones/guestzone/root is the root of the Guest zone. The ISO image should now be visible under /mnt on the Guest zone.

Mounting an ISO image on an already running Guest zone can be useful in scenarios where we need to install sofware from a DVD.
Unmounting the ISO image
To unmount the mounted ISO image:
umount <mountpoint>
For example:
# umount /mnt
Deassign the loopback device from the ISO image:
lofiadm -d <loopback-device>
For Example:
# lofiadm -d /dev/lofi/1