How to Access CDs on Other Systems

You can access a CD on another system by mounting it manually into your file system--provided the other system has shared its CD-ROM according to the instructions in "How to Make Local CDs Available to Other Systems".

1. Select an existing directory to serve as the mount point or create one.

   $ mkdir directory

   directory

   The name of the directory that you create to serve as a mount point for the other system's CD.

2. Find the name of the CD you want to mount.

   When you manually mount a remote CD, you cannot use the cdrom0 or cdrom1 variables available with your local CDs. You must use the exact CD name. To find it, use the ls command on the remote system's /cdrom directory. If the automounter is running, you can simply cd to the system whose CD you want to mount and then use the ls command. If the automounter is not running, you'll have to use another method, such as logging in remotely.

3. As superuser, mount the CD.

   # mount -F nfs -o ro system-name:/cdrom/cd-name local-mount-point

   system-name	The name of the system whose CD you will mount.
   cd-name	The name of the CD you want to mount.
   local-mount-point	The local directory onto which you will mount the remote CD.

4. Log out as superuser.

5. Verify that the CD is mounted by using the ls command to list the contents of the mount point.

   $ ls /cdrom

Example--Accessing CDs on Other Systems

The name of this release is Solaris 7 but code and path or package path names may use Solaris 2.7 or SunOS 5.7. Always follow the code or path as it is written.

This example mounts the CD named Solaris_2.7_sparc from the remote system mars onto the /cdrom directory of the local system.

$ cd /net/mars
$ ls /cdrom
cdrom0     Solaris_2.7_sparc
$ su
Password: password
# mount -F nfs ro mars:/cdrom/Solaris_2.7_sparc /cdrom
# exit
$ ls /cdrom
Solaris_2.7_sparc