Re: accessing loopback filesystem+partitions on a file

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl@lkcl.net>]

On Tue, Jun 28, 2005 at 07:30:58PM -0500, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
> 
> >[if you are happy to reply at all, please reply cc'd thank you.]
> >
> >hi,
> > 
> >
> Hi Luke,
> 
> >the question is, therefore:
> >
> >	* how the hell do you loopback mount (or lvm mount
> >	  or _anything_! something!)  partitions that have
> >	  been created in a loopback'd file!!!!
> > 
> >
> See http://lists.samba.org/archive/linux/2004-December/012627.html
> 
> In summary, if you have a single partition then you can use the 
> following command:
> 
> mount -o loop,offset=32256 loop.img /mnt
> 
> There's mention of a replacement loopback driver that supports 
> partitions but a quick google'ing didn't turn anything up.
 
 yeh, i know - pain, innit - hence my question!

 you'd have to know in advance that someone worked on this
 already such that they picked a suitable keyword e.g. "extended
 loopback" or "enhanced loopback".

 the latter gives this:

	 http://unix.freshmeat.net/projects/enloop/

 fortunately the knowledge is stored in a number of people's heads,
 namely ian and mark's, and they've kindly responded and pointed me in
 a suitable direction.

 lomount.c, a 259-line-program which cannot be found anywhere
 but in source code form, actually analyses the first block
 and performs above-suggested suitable mount commands on your behalf.

 l.