Ubuntu: Up and Running

Mounting Media

When you need access to data, whether on a CD or DVD, another computer, an external USB drive, and so on, you must mount it as part of your Ubuntu filesystem. Mostly this happens automatically as part of the process of accessing the media, for example, by inserting a CD-ROM into the drive.

Drive Mounting

I mentioned the /media folder a little earlier, which is where external media gets mounted as part of the Linux filesystem. Generally, you simply need to insert a USB thumb drive, other storage device, or a CD or DVD, and it will automatically show up in the /media folder and the Places menu, as well as on the desktop.

Mounting ISO Files

You can also mount ISO files, which represent the raw contents of a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM in the form of a single file, typically using the file extension .iso. To do this, right-click the ISO file’s icon and select “Open with Archive Mounter.” This will have the same effect as if you had actually inserted a CD or DVD into your drive, except that you access the ISO image at the speed of the media on which it is saved. So, for example, an ISO image on your hard drive will access at the speed of the drive, which will be many times faster than an optical device reading a CD or DVD.

ISO images can be located anywhere there is space for them, such as the main hard disk, USB hard disks, thumb drives, and even CDs and DVDs. In fact, as you saw in Chapter 2, the DVD-ROM that comes with this book includes a few ISO images of various Ubuntu installation ...