As a simple demonstration, we’ll go through mounting a CD-ROM, such
as the one you may have used to install Debian. You’ll need to be
root to do this, so be careful; whenever you’re root, you have the
power to manipulate the whole system, not just your own files. Also,
these commands assume there’s a CD in your drive; you should put one
in the drive now. Then start with the following command:
su
If you haven’t already, you need to either log in as root or gain
root privileges with the su (super user) command. If you use su,
enter the root password when prompted.
ls /cdrom
Use this command to see what’s in the /cdrom directory before you
start. If you don’t have a /cdrom directory, you may have to make
one using mkdir /cdrom.
mount
Simply typing mount with no arguments lists the currently mounted
filesystems.
mount -t iso9660 _CD-device_ /cdrom
For this command, you should substitute the name of your CD-ROM
device for _CD-device_ in the above command line. If you aren’t
sure, /dev/cdrom is a good guess because the install process should
have created this symbolic link on the system. If that fails, try
the different IDE devices:
/dev/hdc, etc. You should see a message like this: mount: block
/device dev/hdc is write-protected, mounting read-only.
/
/
/
The -t option specifies the type of the filesystem, in this case
iso9660. Most CDs are iso9660. The next argument is the name of the
device to mount, and the final argument is the mount point. There
are many other arguments for mount; see the manual page for details.
Once a CD is mounted, you may find that your drive tray will not
open. You must unmount the CD before removing it.
ls /cdrom
Confirms that /cdrom now contains whatever is on the CD in your
drive.
mount
Displays the list of filesystems again; notice that your CD drive is
now mounted.
umount /cdrom
This unmounts the CD. It’s now safe to remove the CD from the drive.
Notice that the command is umount with no “n,” even though it’s used
to unmount the filesystem.
exit
Don’t leave yourself logged on as root. Log out immediately, just to
be safe.