Browse and Netboot ISO images

Overview

If you use Amahi to regularly download ISO images of operating systems and such like, this page is for you. It describes some tweaks that can be made to an Amahi setup to enable easy browsing and netbooting of ISO images, *without* having to mount each one and copy files. This is particularly handy, if you just want to try out the latest and greatest version of something.

Almost every command in this article needs to be executed with root privileges. Therefore, use "su" to become root before you begin, or prefix each command with sudo if you prefer.

Part 1 - Making ISO images browsable

First, we're going to use the automounter together with /dev/loop to mount the ISO files on demand. Before we can go any further, ensure that you have the automounter installed:

bash code
​yum -y install autofs​

Next, create a suitable mount point. In this example, we're using /media/iso-fs

bash code
​mkdir -p /media/iso-fs​

Now create a file called /media/.iso-fs.map using your favourite editor with the following contents:

bash code
​#!/bin/bash DIR_LIST=(/var/hda/files/torrents /home/*/Downloads) iso=`find ${DIR_LIST[@]} -name $1.iso -type f` echo "-fstype=iso9660 :$iso"​

This script will act as an executable mount map for the automounter, returning suitable mount point parameters if it finds an ISO file that matches the key passed to it.

...and ensure that this file is executable:

bash code
​chmod u+x /media/.iso-fs.map​

The final step is to create