copying files from CD on linux

See if this (or the links below all this) helps you out any.

The first is all about mounting and accessing files from a CD-ROM. The second one is a "cheat sheet" page full of command-line statements/commands you can use for all sorts of work in your Linux system.

Typically to mount a disc you'd just enter the following command:
"mount /dev/hdc /mount/cdrom" where "/dev/hdc" is the system's ID for the hardware device that is your CD-ROM drive, and "/mount/cdrom" is the logical address/directory where you'll access the contents of the CD-ROM disc at (once it's mounted). Much like how Windows ID's your CD-ROM device as IDE0/1 (IDE 0/0 being your hard drive; for this example you've got only one HDD and one CD-ROM drive, both on the same IDE channel - Hard drive as Master and CD-ROM as slave) but you access it as your "D:\" drive. Same concept, different names.

Once you've mounted it (you may need to be "superuser" to do that - look at your distro's help files to get into "superuser" mode, as it varies slightly across the different distributions out there) it's just a matter of changing directories like you normally would.

"cd /mount/cdrom/" and then look around for what you need to find and when you're done you can "unmount" the disc with the "umount" command like so:

"umount /mount/cdrom/" this will remove the cd-rom from the linux file system so it won't still think the data is "attached" and allow you to eject the disc.

If that doesn't help see the first of the following three URL's (the third is a great "cheat sheet" for all sorts of Command-Line Interface work).

Mounting CD-ROMs in Linux (Command Line Instructions)
http://www.control-escape.com/linux/lx-mounting.html

Mounting/Unmounting file systems (Command Line)
http://tldp.org/LDP/GNU-Linux-Tools-Summary/html/c4975.htm

Command Line Cheat Sheet (Super cheat sheet)
http://www.pixelbeat.org/cmdline.html