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Mounting .ISO's Into An NT File System?
haplo21112 asks: "We all know how to mount an ISO image into the Linux file system:
mount -t iso9660 -o loop image.iso /mnt/isoimage.
Unfortunately the rather large software distribution server I am stuck with here at work is 2000 based, but we would love to replicate this functionality somehow on the NT System. I have done many Google searches to find a way of doing this and come up empty. There seem to many utilities that will mount the .ISO as a 'virtual' CD rom drive, but this doesn't really solve the problem since we are talking about mounting something on the order of 200 .ISO images this way.
I am looking to replicate the Linux functionality, create a directory, and mount the ISOs as subdirectories."
I got a free copy of norton virtual drive with my last motherboard, it copies the contents of the CD and stores them as a fake partition. As far as I know win2k also will let you mount/map... a partition as a directory onto another drive partition. However I don't know what kind of partition Norton makes the virtual drives, if they are fat, kinda screwed in a 2K enviormentl. No permissions and doubt you can map them to a folder. My $0.02
Windows 2000 has a lot of directory restructuring tools available for you.
SUBST, JOIN, and the like tools from old-school MS DOS let you map directories to drive letters and vice versa.
Windows 2000 also includes a copy of what is, pretty much, Vetrias Voulme Manager, used for making software RAID arrays (called "Dynamic drives") and such. Maybe you could use it (It's found in Administrative Tools>Computer Managment) to do something of that nature. There's a LOT of options about removable media, media pools, and volume management there.
Also check in the MSKB. It's actually helpful if you know what you're looking for.
Actually I could use something like this as well, since the infamous Microtest/xStore machine still doesn't work right - never did get any of the code from them - and the school netadmin isn't going to have a clue how to work the samba-sharing-loop-mounts linux server after my contract runs out.
You can use WinImage or other tools to extract the iso. Also, the latest version of VMWare mounts iso files as virtual drives. I don't think either of these help the original poster though.
Microsoft have one - vcd.exe is the installer.
2-10-2000 18:25 24,064 VCdControlTool.exe
2-10-2000 18:05 11,296 VCdRom.sys
I can't remember how I got it though - possibly the Windows XP beta program.
Mmmmmmm
Aside from being one of the best pieces of software to burn CS (and so much more), NERO by Ahead Software
.iso images as drives on your Win32 system.
http://www.nero.com/en/function.htm
Has a SCSI/Image interpreter that mounts
NO....we have 200GB on the Windows box, they will NOT buy another box nor will our datacenter(whom all servers must be supported by due to 24/7/365 requirements) support any OS by Windows.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
We are often given the ISO images from the start, and not te CD's nd there are frequent changes to the contents of the ISO's. There for easier to mount unmount with the new editions.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Interesting topic, because I was just thinking about this the other day. I'm planning on building an ISO server, and you should consider the same.
/dev/loopN and iso9660 support.
The server will be based on Linux, and have plenty of disk space to hold the large number of ISO files. I'd write a script that would read a directory listing and mount all ISO files via the
From there, the ISO mount points are going to be accessible via an SMB (Samba) share.
This will allow users on the network to use their "Network Neighborhood" or "Computers Near Me" interfaces to browse the files. In fact, most users will probably never know about the ISO files, nor will they know that they're browsing a linux machine. Its going to be ultra transparent.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
You've got it backwards. The poster wants to mount some 200 images as folders, not drive letters. SUBST isn't going to help him.
For example, disc 1 would be a file such as c:\images\disc1.iso and be mounted as c:\library\disc1\ ; disc 2 would be c:\images\disc2.iso mounted as c:\library\disc2\ and so on. Basically, the single *.iso file is an entire file system (read: disc) squashed into a file and sitting on another file system.
By way of explanation, file system images are individual files representing a disk partition. They are as if you were to take the data off of a disk bit by bit, in sequence, with all partition information, file tables, etc., and put it into a file. This image can be ISO, FAT, NTFS, VFAT, FAT32, EXT2, EXT3, whatever format you can think of. You can have a FAT32 filesystem residing within an NTFS filesystem. With a proper operating system, you can mount this "virtual filesystem in a file" as a filesystem. In UNIX type OS's, there are no drive letters, but the filesystem can be mounted to a directory. In Microsoft-type OS's, every filesystem is mounted as a drive letter rather than a directory, which inherently limits you to a maximum of 26 simultaneously mounted "drives." The UNIX limitation is much higher.
In the days of DOS, it was found that some programs work best if their folders were in the root directory of some drive. Unfortunately, this made for a very cluttered root directory. A workaround was implemented: SUBST allows you to mount a directory as a virtual drive letter, letting the program have it's own root directory, while allowing the user to "sort out" his hard drive by having directories for programs, etc.
DOS and Windows have never had native support for mounting partitions as directories; this support IS available (finally) under Windows XP. Mounting image files as folders is uniquely UNIX-like; I don't know if XP supports this or not.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
You may find the following Microsoft Knowledge Base articles informative, if not the answer to you questions:
k b; EN-US;Q205524
k b; en-us;Q226545
k b; EN-US;Q175761
How to Create and Manipulate NTFS Junction Points (Q205524)
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=
How Single Instance Storage Identifies Which Volumes to Manage (Q226545)
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=
Dynamic vs. Basic Storage in Windows 2000 and Windows XP (Q175761)
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=
(Be sure to remove spaces in the URLs. The slashcode on slashdot has a bug that inserts spaces in long words.)
I think that Windows 2000/XP may not support filesystems that are not seen as physical volumes (partitions) or logical volumes on a dynamic partition. I have not been able to find anything that indicates file-based filesystem images are supported.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
Two one hundred gig ATA/100 ide drives (yeah, SCSI would be better) would run about US$450... A box to put them in, say $500. Under $1000 plus the time to install and config Linux and Samba. Let's be pessimists and say its $5000 all added up.
I bet you guys wasted more than that already looking for a Windows solution.
Methinks you work for morons. I know, I used to.
You could've hired me.
I think you may have an uphill battle here. As far as I know, Win2K expects a filesystem to be either a physical partition or on a Windows 2000 dynamic disk. I don't think it knows how to handle image files.
There may be a third-party utility which allows this. I don't know what it is.
Your best bet may be (impossible, but who knows...) to convince the powers-that-be that the only way to implement this is using *nix/Samba and that the Total Cost of Ownership will be less than the TCO of the current implementation.
If the TCO is more than what you're doing now, consider the proposal toilet paper.
Remember that TCO includes not only the cost of implementation, but productivity issues as well. If productivity is sufficiently increased, then TCO will be lower than it currently is.
You mentioned that the datacenter only supports Windows 2000. In my opinion, that is short-sighted, but that is a topic for another flameb^H^H^H^H^H^H story.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
it's called ISOBuster. www.isobuster.com. it supports an obscene number of image formats, reads all kinds of discs... the list goes on. i'm not sure if it can mount an image as a folder or drive letter, but the guy who wrote the app has a few other utilities... maybe one of them will help too.
Dammit, I meant to post that anonymously!
1. DAEMON Tools (currently v2.88)
2. FarStone Tech's Virtual Drive (currently v6.2)
My recommendation is DAEMON Tools. It is a quick and dirty freeware solution which has proven rock solid on my systems. It mounts ISO and a variety of other CD image file types as lettered drives. It's really built for use on a workstation but once the drives are mounted they can be shared like any other normal drive. (Tools to create CD images are not included.)
Virtual Drive (Network Edition) is commercial software and comes in a variety of languages. It has a prettier interface and includes CD management tools (ISO creation). Personally it didn't impress me but YMMV.
This may or may not be feasible as I have never attempted such a thing (I have no need for 200+ ISO's)... Essentially, I am aware of two technologies within win2k/ntfs that may allow for such a configuration as I believe that you are looking for.
First, a functionality exists in win2k through which to mount drive partitions as folders... Unlike the idea of using subst & such, this is not constricted by the magic number of 26 drive letters. Simply identify/create the partitions (logical, extended, dynamic, physical drives whatever...) and edit the properties to have them mounted as folers. The ISO's could then be stored in partitions/drives mounted as folders with appropriate names. More can be gleamed on this topic by reading this Microsoft article at Technet.
A second alternative, that while being more complicated may provide for greater flexibility would be to implement DFS (Distributed File System). Through this package you can map ANY drive/partition on any workstation to appear as a shared folder on a server. As the name suggests, this would allow for a more distributed strategy that would allow you to leverage several machines in distributing your ISO's. More can be read on DFS at this site...
I hope this information proves to be useful for you and that I am not misunderstanding you intentions!!! As many others have pointed out, Linux would far and away be a better, more compact solution; however, like you I am saddled with the responsiblity of working at a Microsoft centric company...and for the record - IT SUCKS!!!
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. -- Benjamin Franklin
You must mean DaemonToolz.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
However...
Realize that you still have the Linux support problems which likely make you fear it in the first place, plus the need to support vmware as well.
You clearly are operating under a policy where you can't get the help you need and don't have confidence in your own skills in the area to be self-sufficient. Neither of these is meant as a disparaging comment on it's own (no one knows everything, after all), but it does mean that your support policies are insufficient to meet your real-world needs. Ignoring these real world needs as "real", in favour of simplifying your data center's support requirements strikes me as rather stupid, or at least nearsighted, though I don't know on who's part.
Really, loopback-mounting the .iso images on a Linux box that serves up SMB shares, using Samba, is probably the easiest way to get this done -- you're not running a changing or complex environment on the Linux box, you're simply serving files, so stability should not be a major problem. You're also in luck, as many, many others have "snuck" Samba on Linux into operational environments when faced with problems such as yours, generally with a positive experience.
So, I stand by my suggestion: install a minimal Linux distribution, with Samba (Red Hat should do fine). Duplicate over another machine if you worry about hardware failures. Experience suggests that this really does result in the lowest TCO -- this isn't bleeding edge Linux stuff.
You could've hired me.
Really, it doesn't sound like your datacentre can be up to much if they only support Windows. I'm not playing the Linux zealot here, but if they *refuse* to play nicely, you should pull your servers and get them in somewhere decently clueful.
Using Samba, and mounting the images with the loopback filesystem, is really the only sensible way to do this. It's quick, it's cheap, and it *works*. Leave politics out of it. This is a job that *nix (Linux, BSD etc) excels at. Windows is great on the desktop, but it's just not capable of handling this.
Think about it - if you needed a hole dug, you'd use a spade. If you needed a big hole dug, you'd use a JCB. No amount of politicking is going to make the spade dig a big hole as fast as a JCB.
I don't have .iso's to test this on, but in cygwin mount so far looks just like I'd excpect. This may only mount your iso's in the cygwin directory structure though, in which case you'd need to run samba or something like that in cygwin. Samba on windows! Ha! That'd suck if that's the best solution. . .
Timothy, are you being asked by your employers to include more NT issues, or are you looking to bail out of
The question posed does not help Linux penetrate a technical market niche; it helps give NT a functionality that Linux already has.
If you are running out of good "Ask Slashdot" submissions, please let us know. I could probably fire off 10 good ones if I knew the effort I expended would be worthwhile.
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