From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Bill Davidsen Subject: Re: Can I abuse md like this? Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2006 17:15:14 -0500 Message-ID: <4596E4F2.2060201@tmr.com> References: <458DF579.1090603@tmr.com> <17805.63419.748876.939243@cse.unsw.edu.au> <45902232.6000706@tmr.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <45902232.6000706@tmr.com> Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org To: Linux Raid List Cc: Neil Brown List-Id: linux-raid.ids Bill Davidsen wrote: > 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. > Rather than setup nbd I did try a loop mount, and the whole process worked flawlessly. I was able to look at partitions, read the partition table, and generally do anything I could from a device. It worked so well I backed it up as an image, just in case I ever want to do something else with it. Many thanks. -- bill davidsen CTO TMR Associates, Inc Doing interesting things with small computers since 1979