How to mount MDF images in Debian GNU / Linux -
What is the MDF and MDS file
I've recently had to
mount an MDF (.mdf) image file on my Debian
Linux . I never used
.MDF file extension before and
therefore I had no clue what is this file extension, so I did a
quick research in Google to educate myself
what is the MDF file
format?
What I found was one article on
ehow.com titled
What is
MDF & MDS and one article in Wikipedia
MDF and MDS file
pair
In short MDF is a CD9660 like ISO format produced by some
CD
burning and image creation software like
Alcohol
120%
An
MDS file accompanies the
.MDF file. The
.MDS is an optional metadata descriptor file which explains
what is contained in the
.MDF (iso like file).
MDF is not so standartized format like the usual
ISO's we use to snapshot optical CD or DVDs but still is
produced by some programs.
The
MDF and
MDS file pairs are typically created by
two famous MS Windows programs:
- Alcohol 120%
- Daemon Tools
Both of the softwares are
non-free programs, with the little
exception -
Daemon Tools is at least a freeware.
This is the reason why
MDF format is far from popular across
GNU / Linux and BSD* users and mostly used across
Microsoft Windows platforms.
On Windows there are plenty of program capable of reading and
opening .MDF extension files; The two aforementioned programs +
MagicISO is few of the many programs which support
mounting /
(Create virtual drive) for MDF files.
On Free Opearting Systems,
(Linux / BSD) there are two GUI
programs, that are capable of mounting MDF files;:
- Furiusisomount
- AcetoneISO
I've tried both of them, for the sake of testing. With
FuriosIsoMount however mounting the MDF failed. I tried to
mount with
FuriousIsoMount by launching the program with
both non-root and root privileges. The program was capable of
detect the
.MDF file, I can browse the file and even it
appeared like it is mounting the MDF fine when pressing on
Mount button, however the mount point directory stays
empty.
With
AcetoneISO program mounting the MDF directly was
possible, but only when the program was run with root privileges.
With non-root privileges I got the error:
Error, could not mount image.
There is also alternative way command way to mount an MDF image
by;
1. Using mdf2iso to convert the MDF image file to
ISO
2. Use the regular Linux mount command to mount the
converted ISO9660 file
On Debian there
mdf2iso is avaialable as a deb
package.
To install it:
linux:~# apt-get install --yes mdf2iso
1. Convert MDF to ISO with mdf2iso
To
convert the MDF image to ISO with mdf2iso cmd I
used:
hipo@linux:~/mdf-iso$ mdf2iso my-mdf-iso-file.mdf
mdf2iso v0.3.1 by Salvatore Santagati
Licensed under GPL v2 or later
47% [: >=========:]
2. Mount the newly converted ISO file with mount cmd
linux:~# mkdir /mnt/ISO
hipo@linux:~/mdf-iso$ mount -t iso9660 -o loop my-mdf-iso-file.iso
/mnt/ISO
Now your MDF will be mounted in
/mnt/ISO