Friday, 17 October 2008

Mount CD/DVD Images (ISO/BIN/NRG) Using AcetoneISO2 in Debian and Ubuntu

AcetoneISO is a graphical application written in Qt4 which lets you mount CD/DVD images easily. The formats supported are ISO, NRG, MDF, BIN and IMG. It does not come in Debian repositories, but I will show you how to easily install, run and start to use it.

Installation in Debian Lenny
Follow the steps below:

1. Install the dependencies
As root, install the following packages:

apt-get install fuse-utils fuseiso libqt4-gui pinentry-qt

In Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope you may also need package p7zip-full:

apt-get install p7zip-full

2. Make a symbolic link from /bin/fusermount to point at /usr/bin/fusermount
As root, type:

ln -s /usr/bin/fusermount /bin/fusermount

3. Download the DEB package
Download the Debian .DEB package from the official website, here. At the time of writing there are two releases available, 2.0.2 and 2.0.3 RC1. I tested this for 2.0.2 and it works on both Debian Lenny and Ubuntu.

4. Install the package
Make sure the current working directory is the one where you saved the DEB package, and type as root:

dpkg -i acetoneiso_2.0.2-0~getdeb1_i386

Notice that the name may be changed, so replace it with the proper name in that case.

5. Add your user to the fuse group
The next step you will need to follow is to add your username to the group fuse. In order to do that, run as root:

addgroup your_username fuse

And replace your_username with the user you are using.

That's it. AcetoneISO2 should be now properly installed. To remove it, use dpkg -r acetoneiso2 as root.

Running AcetoneISO
AcetoneISO can be used not only to mount and unmount images, but to create images from CDs/DVDs or convert various image formats to ISO, rip DVDs to Xvid (never tried it, so I can't tell how it handles quality factors, subtitles, audio etc). Just look under the Utilities, Conversion and Video! menus.

Screenshot of AcetoneISO2 2.0.2 with a mounted Ubuntu ISO image

As a side note, I consider the simplest way to mount images this one:

mount -o loop /path/to/image.iso /path/to/mount/point/

As root. And you can also use the nrg2iso and iat tools to convert between various image formats.

Have some other suggestions? Or maybe some other ways or tools (maybe including context menus in Nautilus or Konqueror) to manipulate images? Please share it in the comments below.

Related articles
Tip of the Day: Convert NRG Images to ISO

Updated: March 31, 2009

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

In Ubuntu Intrepid it is possible to select "Open with Archive Mounter" from the file context menu and have the ISO/ZIP/etc show on the desktop.

Anonymous said...

mount -o loop /path/to/image.iso /path/to/mount/point/

While typing that in the console is certainly easy for some, the majority would prefer being able to just right click on it and mount. Just like UltraISO or Daemon Tools for windows provides.

Anonymous said...

"In Ubuntu Intrepid it is possible to select "Open with Archive Mounter" from the file context menu and have the ISO/ZIP/etc show on the desktop."


Don't know what your point is. Sure you can do that in Debian too, but that's not the same as mounting the ISO-image.