ISO images are files with the data content of an optical medium such as CD or DVD. Regular use of an ISO is to burn it on a physical medium. But the versatility of Linux and Ubuntu in particular allows us to access that data without recording it.

In Ubuntu we can mount an ISO image of a CD-ROM or DVD in a file system directory and access to any other directory. We do not need third-party applications and in other operating systems.

We see the steps to achieve this. We will use as file name to mount "file.iso". Open a terminal as usual, from the menu Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal, or by pressing CTRL + ALT + T. We will go by copying the following commands:

sudo mkdir /media/cd

Which creates a directory that will serve as a fucking mounting the ISO image.

sudo modprobe loop

Load the kernel module loop.

sudo mount -t iso9660 -o loop archivo.iso /media/cd

We set up the image of cd / dvd "file.iso" in the / media / cd. The image is located in the directory from which you launched the command, if it would add the path to the file, or desplazaríamos us to where this file.

This image is mounted. In seconds we will see the CD icon on the desktop. We can get there, or the route we gave in the first step.

Could not have been correctly assembled. In addition to iso9660 format using the UDF file system of cederroms and DVDs. If this were the case the command does not vary much. Would be:

sudo mount -t udf -o loop archivo.iso /media/cd

When we finish, we may be interested in removing the image to which we will use the following command:

sudo umount /media/cd

These commands apply to all editions of Ubuntu.