Autorun a CD, autorun.inf

[Mike Singletary]

Sameera Shaakunthala wrote:

> In Windows OS, when writing data CDs , we can specify an executable file
> to be run automatically, when the CD is inserted to the drive. This is
> usually done by editing the 'autorun.ini' file.
> How can I do this for Ubuntu?
> How could I specify an executable (bin) file to be run automatically
> when the CD is inserted to a computer which runs Ubuntu?

With my experience in creating CDs in Linux, I've found that what you're
trying to do just isn't possible. Think of the potential security risk
that doing this might cause...

I did research this a bit prior to e-mailing my response and everything
I found pretty much supports that. It's not possible to set up an
autorun file that will automatically execute a bin file when inserting a
CD. I did find a couple of ways to auto-launch an HTML file, but that'd
be useless to you.

As beneficial as it may be, I find that it's much more of a security
risk than it is a benefit and would like to think that Ubuntu (and Linux
in general) does not, indeed, support this.

Your CD should, based on user settings, automatically launch as a
browseable folder though. I know it's not exactly what you're looking to
do, but at least the end-user won't be baffled as to why it appears that
nothing happened.