accessing loopback filesystem+partitions on a file

Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
2005-06-28T23:53:37Z

[if you are happy to reply at all, please reply cc'd thank you.]

hi,

i'm really sorry to be bothering people on this list but i genuinely
don't what phrases to google for what i am looking for without getting
swamped by useless pages, which you will understand why when you see
the question, below.

background:

i'm sort-of helping test a xen install project where a
block device is presented as the DRIVE - not, i repeat
not, the partitions on the drive which is the quotes
normal quotes way of doing xen installes

(yes there are good reasons for doing this).

the thing is that the install is failing, and we'd duh
like to analyse what's going on (access the log files -
no, sshd hasn't been installed yet) after terminating
the xen session [because afaik in xen guest sessions
there's no way i know of to access virtual consoles 2-6]

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!!!!

[aside from booting up a second pre-installed xen
guest domain and making the filesystem-in-a-file
available as /dev/hdb of course.]

answers of the form "work out where the partitions are, then use
hexedit to remove the first few blocks" will win no prizes here.

l.

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