mounting fake cd-roms that are on usb sticks

[Petter Adsen]

On Wed, 21 Oct 2015 03:54:10 -0700
"Peter F. Patel-Schneider" <pfpschneider at gmail.com> wrote:

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> My initial guess was indeed that this was a U3 disk (or something similar).
>  However, that does not appear to be the case, as can be seen from the
> kernel messages.  The disk has two partitions - a normal one (5:0:0:1) that
> is mounted fine and one (5:0:0:0) that claims to be a CD-ROM and does not
> show up on the desktop.  This CD-ROM partition does result in the creation
> of /dev/sr0 which can then be mounted manually.
> 
> My guess is that there is no way to signal that a CD is present in /dev/sr0
> so there is nothing to trigger putting a icon on the desktop, but this is
> only a guess.

You could try to create an fstab entry for it, and give it x-gvfs-show
under options, then it will be displayed graphically. You probably also
want to use nofail, so that the boot will not hang if the device isn't
present (if you use systemd).

Something like:

/dev/sr0   /mnt  iso9660  nofail,x-gvfs-show,ro  0 0

Add something like that, plug in the USB stick, and see if it works.

Petter

> On 10/21/2015 03:06 AM, Darac Marjal wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 09:01:56AM -0700, Peter F. Patel-Schneider
> > wrote:  
> >> I have USB stick that presents as both a CD-ROM drive and a regular
> >> drive. (Why?  I guess so that the CD-ROM part cannot be modified.)  
> > 
> > Is this a "U3" drive, by any chance? There, the CD-ROM part contains 
> > drivers/installers for the functionality on the HDD part. The idea was 
> > that the host OS (the designers only thought to target Windows) would see
> > the CD-ROM and an "empty" hard drive, install a launcher application from
> > the CD-ROM and that installer would provide access to apps on the disk.
> > 
> > You can modify a U3 disk (change the CD-image, remove the CD part and so
> >  on) with U3-tool: http://u3-tool.sourceforge.net/
> >   
> >> 
> >> The regular drive is detected, shows up on the desktop, and is mounted
> >> fine. However, the CD-ROM part does not even show up on the desktop and
> >> the only way I can figure out to mount it is `sudo mount /dev/sr0
> >> /mnt`.
> >> 
> >> I would like to have this drive to at least show up on the desktop,
> >> and preferably be automounted.  Does anyone know how to do this?
> >> 
> >> peter



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