Messages in this thread | | | From | (bill davidsen) | Subject | Re: [NEW FEATURE]Partitions on loop device for 2.6 | Date | 7 Jan 2004 22:15:12 GMT |
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In article <200401031905.42584.blaisorblade_spam@yahoo.it>, BlaisorBlade <blaisorblade_spam@yahoo.it> wrote: | Alle 22:04, venerdì 2 gennaio 2004, Bill Davidsen ha scritto: | > BlaisorBlade wrote: | > > NEED: | > > I have the need to loop mount files containing not plain filesystems, but | > > whole disk images. | > > | > > This is especially needed when using User-mode-linux, since to run any | > > distro installer you must partition the virtual disks(and on the host, | > > the backing file of the disk contains a partition table). | > > | > > Currently this could be done by specifying a positive offset, but letting | > > the kernel partition code handle this is better, isn't it? Would you ever | > > accept this feature into stock kernel? | > | > UML is on my list of things to learn (as opposed to "try casually and | > ignore") | It is something a bit like VMWare. But instead of emulating hardware and | running an OS inside that, you run a patched Linux kernel that runs as an | userspace process on the host and provides a virtual machine, which must | access a virtual disk, which is stored on a file. | See http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/ for more info.
As noted, I tried it casually, got a kernel to boot and run, and decided it wasn't a solution to problems I had at the time.
| > but have you considered using NBD? | I didn't really know what it was, nor it seems useful for this "as is" (I've | not really checked). Maybe that sentence means that the server program could | do the partition parsing?
NBD = network block device
This allows a user-space program to publish a file which a kernel with nbd enabled can mount as a device. So you should be able to run fdisk and partition it, load stuff on it, and generally treat it like a drive.
Take a look at Documentation/nbd.txt, it may be exactly what you want to provide a "block device" which can be on the same system using the loopback interface. -- bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com> CTO, TMR Associates, Inc Doing interesting things with little computers since 1979. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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