From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Bill Davidsen Subject: Re: Can I abuse md like this? Date: Mon, 25 Dec 2006 14:10:42 -0500 Message-ID: <45902232.6000706@tmr.com> References: <458DF579.1090603@tmr.com> <17805.63419.748876.939243@cse.unsw.edu.au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <17805.63419.748876.939243@cse.unsw.edu.au> Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org To: Neil Brown Cc: Linux Raid List List-Id: linux-raid.ids Neil Brown wrote: > On Saturday December 23, davidsen@tmr.com wrote: > >> I hope I can use the md code to solve a problem, although in a way >> probably not envisioned by the author(s). >> >> I have a disk image, a physical dump of every sector from start to >> finish, including the partition table. What I hope I can do is to create >> a one drive RAID-1 partitionable array, and then access it with fdisk or >> similar. These partitions are not "nice" types such as FAT, VFAT, ext2, >> etc, this is an odd disk, and I "saved it" by saving everything. Now I'd >> like to start dismembering the information and putting it into useful >> pieces. I even dare to hope that I could get the original software >> running on a virtual machine at some point. >> >> The other alternative is to loopback mount it, I'm somewhat reluctant to >> do that if I can avoid it. >> >> Yes, the partition table is standard in format if not in content. >> > > Maybe... > Is this image in a file? > md only works with block devices, so you would need to use the 'loop' > driver to create a block-device "/dev/loopX". > I was thinking nbd, actually. > But as loop devices cannot be partitioned, you could then > mdadm -Bf /dev/md/d9 -amdp8 -l1 -f -n1 /dev/loopX > > and then look at the partitions in /dev/md/d9_* > > Should work. Sounds worth a try. Will be a learning experience if nothing else. -- bill davidsen CTO TMR Associates, Inc Doing interesting things with small computers since 1979