When working with virtual machines and embedded devices, you'll probably end up working with a disk image at some point.
To work with disk images in gnu/linux, you can attach the file to the a device. To do so, you use the losetup command (which requires root privileges).
usage:
losetup [options] loop_device file # setup
losetup -F [options] loop_device [file] # setup, read /etc/fstab
losetup loop_device # give info
losetup -a # give info of all loops
losetup -f # show next free loop device
losetup -d loop_device # delete
losetup -R loop_device # resize
options: -e encryption -o offset -s sizelimit -p passwdfd -T -S pseed
-H phash -I loinit -K gpgkey -G gpghome -C itercountk -v -r
-P cleartextkey
The challenge is if the disk image has multiple partitions. Though the loop device will be aware of the different partitions (which you can view with fdisk, and you'll need to in order to get the offset number required to mount the last partition), you can't access them all at once.
So far I only know how to mount the last partition on the disk image. You find out the offset of that partition, and attach it to the loopback device:
losetup -o52428800 /dev/loop0 debian-sarge-256-hda.img mount -text3 /dev/loop0 /mnt/debian-sarge-cf/
It works! How to find out the offset? Use fdisk on the loopback device when the entire image is attached to it:
losetup /dev/loop0 debian-sarge-256-hda.img fdisk /dev/loop0 Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/loop0: 232 MB, 232783872 bytes 16 heads, 32 sectors/track, 888 cylinders Units = cylinders of 512 * 512 = 262144 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/loop0p1 * 1 80 20479+ 83 Linux /dev/loop0p2 81 200 30720 83 Linux /dev/loop0p3 201 888 176128 83 Linux Command (m for help): u Changing display/entry units to sectors Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/loop0: 232 MB, 232783872 bytes 16 heads, 32 sectors/track, 888 cylinders, total 454656 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/loop0p1 * 1 40959 20479+ 83 Linux /dev/loop0p2 40960 102399 30720 83 Linux /dev/loop0p3 102400 454655 176128 83 Linux
Use the "u" command in fdisk to change the units, then multiply the start number times 512, 102400 * 512 = 52428800.
Actually - turns out this also works on partitions other than the last one. For example, I just mounted the second partition by using the 40960 offset, multiplied by 512 = 20971520:
# losetup -o20971520 /dev/loop0 debian-sarge-256-hda.img # mount -text3 /dev/loop0 /mnt/debian-sarge-cf/
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