Use CDEmu CD/DVD device emulator on Kubuntu and Ubuntu 14.10

Introduction

If you have CD/DVD disk image files such as files with .mds, .cue, .iso extensions then you can use CDEmu daemon from CDEmu suite http://cdemu.sourceforge.net/about/ to mount them on your Linux without burning to physical disks. CDEmu suite is a collection of programs to facilitate virtual optical drive on the Linux operative systems. CDEmu suite provides the following components:

 - VHBA module; a linux kernel module which exposes a virtual SCSI Host bus adapter

- libMirage; a library which can be used access data stored in different image files

- CDEmu daemon; a daemon which implements the virtual devices by passing the data between VHBA kernel module and CDEmu client back and forth.

- CDEmu client; a command line application for controlling CDEmu daemon which can be used to actually perform tasks on the virtual devices such as mounting, unmounting image files as well as checking status of virtual devices.

- gCDEmu; a graphical version of command line CDEmu client.

We will be using CDEmu client to utilize the CDEmu virtual devices.

Installation on Kubuntu and Ubuntu 14.10 64-bit distribution

Install the following five deb files in order:

vhba-dkms_20140928-1_all.deb

libmirage10_3.0.3-1_amd64.deb

cdemu-daemon_3.0.2-1_amd64.deb

cdemu-client_3.0.0-1_all.deb

gcdemu_3.0.0-1_all.deb

Usage on Kubuntu; command line client (use similar approach for Ubuntu)

Mounting image files

I have two image files for two different Linux games: Creatures_3_Internet_Edition.iso and majesty.iso

Now I am going to mount them in two different virtual devices

steps:

navigate to the folder containing the iso files

open a terminal in the current folder by pressing keyboard Shift and F4 keys together.

To mount majesty.iso, type:

cdemu load 0 majesty.iso 

on the terminal and press enter. This will load majesty.iso on the first virtual device and you can navigate to the mounted device by clicking on the Majesty_Linux just showed up on the Places panel.

Now, to mount Creatures_3_Internet_Edition.iso, put the following command first:

cdemu add-device 

This will create one more virtual device. Now, just put the same command as with mounting majesty.iso but with different load number, type:

cdemu load 1 Creatures_3_Internet_Edition.iso

The number followed by load parameter indicates the virtual device you are going to use for mounting purposes. Now, you should see both devices showed up on the file manager's device panel.

And finally you can check the virtual devices status by putting the following command:

cdemu status

Unmounting image files

To unmount the iso files just put the following commands:

cdemu unload 0

cdemu unload 1

You can know more usage of cdemu command by putting the following command in the terminal:

man cdemu

Scroll the manual window using Up and  Down arrow keys and press q to exit from the manual. Type exit and press enter in the terminal to close the terminal window.

Usage of Graphical client

follow the similar procedure for the graphical client.

Find and run gCDEmu from the application launcher; Kickoff->Applications->System->gCDEmu

Right click on the on the System Tray gCDEmu icon and click New device from the pop-up menu.

And now select Device #00 from the pop-up menu and this will give Device properties dialog window.

From the Status tab click Load button and select your image from the file browser.

Now check the file manager for image loaded device to mount and browse it. Use device properties dialog to unload and remove devices.

Cheers!