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Hey guys,

I have a friend with a machine running Ubuntu 8.04. For some reason, he has this strange limitation where the optical drive opens only when either the drive is empty, or when the disc is not being access by a program. These sound like reasonable limitations, but he is trying to install Baldur's Gate II (with perhaps the goal of playing it via WINE).

Question:
He knows how to make an .ISO out of each disc, but how do you assign a drive letter to each .iso? The only reason why this is necessary is because the installer program will ask for the next disc in the install, but since the Installer is accessing the optical drive, the optical drive WILL NOT open so that the next CD can be inserted.

any help is appreciated. (I'm looking at you, jbi )

Give each ISO it's own mount point. Using winecfg, click on the "Drives" tab, and add the mount points as drives.

http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/how-to-mo ... linux.html

You'll also need to be sure that the game can source from multiple different drive letters. Failing that, back in the day I would routinely 'remix' multi-CD games onto a single DVD precisely to aid in Wine installations.

Forge wrote:

You'll also need to be sure that the game can source from multiple different drive letters. Failing that, back in the day I would routinely 'remix' multi-CD games onto a single DVD precisely to aid in Wine installations.

Couldn't you just unmount disc 1 and mount disc2 in its place?

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

Forge wrote:

You'll also need to be sure that the game can source from multiple different drive letters. Failing that, back in the day I would routinely 'remix' multi-CD games onto a single DVD precisely to aid in Wine installations.

Couldn't you just unmount disc 1 and mount disc2 in its place?

You could, but Bauldur's Gate can source from multiple drive letters. Just go into the game's INI file, and adjust accordingly. The variables should already be there, and may have already been set by the installation process.

titan wrote:

Give each ISO it's own mount point. Using winecfg, click on the "Drives" tab, and add the mount points as drives.

http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/how-to-mo ... linux.html

Link doesn't go anywhere? This sounds good, though, I like where you are going with this.

ssidbroadcast wrote:

titan wrote:

Give each ISO it's own mount point. Using winecfg, click on the "Drives" tab, and add the mount points as drives.

http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/how-to-mo ... linux.html

Link doesn't go anywhere? This sounds good, though, I like where you are going with this.

I use virtual CloneDrive, just install, select the number of virtual drives you want to make, and double click on each iso to mount it.

However, I remember specifically having a problem with Baldurs Gate 1, which needed 3 cd's and it wasn't working even with all of them mounted. I ended up having to burn them all to a dvd and use them that way.

Funny, the link still works for me. Just do a Google search for "mount iso linux", and that should get you to where you need to go.

Once your friend has it all figured out, he can write a script that'll automatically mount the images before he starts the game.

For anyone advising from a Windows viewpoint, there's an additional caveat in here. Windows will let you eject a CD/DVD even if it's actively in use, virtual or physical, while Linux is a little more conservative and will not let you yank the disc in use out. There are a great many ways around it, though.

Personally, I recommend Crossover Gaming. Unlike some other Wine packager/tweaker groups *cough* Cedega-dbags *cough*, they support and contribute to Wine that they derive from, and XOver Games has a lot of nice compatibility and performance tweaks that assist with problems like these.

When you go to Places -> Home folder, you'll see a left bar containing your mounts. Either in 8.04 or 8.10 an Eject button was added, allowing you to easily unmount things like a USB stick, CD/DVD drive or other removable storage. Doesn't that work?

Aside from that, it would be great to have a Daemon Tools-like tool for Linux. You could try Gmount-ISO though, its available from Add/Remove programs or Synaptic.

sub.mesa wrote:

Either in 8.04 or 8.10 an Eject button was added, allowing you to easily unmount things like a USB stick, CD/DVD drive or other removable storage. Doesn't that work?

The critical word here is 'unmount'. You can not unmount CD/DVDs that are running installers, at least around 99% of the time. Windows allows you to remove physical media out from under a running process, most other OSes generally do not. It's in-use, so it can't be cleanly unmounted.

sub.mesa wrote:

Aside from that, it would be great to have a Daemon Tools-like tool for Linux. You could try Gmount-ISO though, its available from Add/Remove programs or Synaptic.

I'm really curious how that doesn't constitute a "Daemon Tools-like tool for Linux". You can mount isos. You have a GUI to do so.

mattsteg wrote:

sub.mesa wrote:

Aside from that, it would be great to have a Daemon Tools-like tool for Linux. You could try Gmount-ISO though, its available from Add/Remove programs or Synaptic.

I'm really curious how that doesn't constitute a "Daemon Tools-like tool for Linux". You can mount isos. You have a GUI to do so.

There is no emulation for copy protection schemes, making installing games on Linux non-working without a no-cd crack; something that's not really sexy for legally bought games.

Also, it can mount ISO, but not even ISOs with UDF formatting, or any other image type (ccd/cue/bin/dat/mds/nrg). So its not really a replacement of Daemon Tools - such software currently is non-existent on Linux. Sadly.