Lynn David Newton wrote:
>....  as needed when mounting an ISO file image.

This is correct in the sense that you use the loopback device when mounting an 
iso filesystem that is sitting as a '.iso' file on your hard drive. You don't 
use it to mount the disk in a drive.

Suppose you have the file future_disk.iso sitting in your home directory. 
Perhaps you made this file by putting a data CD into your cdrom drive and typing:

$ dd if=/dev/cdrom of=future_disk.iso

This is a great way to rip a data CD, by the way.

You can check your work by mounting this image while it is still in a file :

$ mount -t iso9660 -o ro,loop=/dev/loop0 future_disk.iso /mnt/cdrom

This is a good way to test iso files that you've made using mkisofs before 
burning them to disk also.

-- 
Kevin O'Connor

  "People will be free to devote themselves to activities that are fun ...

The GNU Manifesto - Copyright (C) 1985, 1993 Free Software Foundation, Inc.