This patch allows to use loop device with partitionned disk image.
Original behavior of loop is not modified.
A new parameter is introduced to define how many partition we want to be
able to manage per loop device. This parameter is "max_part".
For instance, to manage 63 partitions / loop device, we will do:
# modprobe loop max_part=63
# ls -l /dev/loop?*
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 0 2008-03-05 14:55 /dev/loop0
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 64 2008-03-05 14:55 /dev/loop1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 128 2008-03-05 14:55 /dev/loop2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 192 2008-03-05 14:55 /dev/loop3
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 256 2008-03-05 14:55 /dev/loop4
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 320 2008-03-05 14:55 /dev/loop5
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 384 2008-03-05 14:55 /dev/loop6
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 448 2008-03-05 14:55 /dev/loop7
And to attach a raw partitionned disk image, the original losetup is used:
# losetup -f etch.img
# ls -l /dev/loop?*
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 0 2008-03-05 14:55 /dev/loop0
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 1 2008-03-05 14:57 /dev/loop0p1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 2 2008-03-05 14:57 /dev/loop0p2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 5 2008-03-05 14:57 /dev/loop0p5
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 64 2008-03-05 14:55 /dev/loop1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 128 2008-03-05 14:55 /dev/loop2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 192 2008-03-05 14:55 /dev/loop3
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 256 2008-03-05 14:55 /dev/loop4
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 320 2008-03-05 14:55 /dev/loop5
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 384 2008-03-05 14:55 /dev/loop6
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 448 2008-03-05 14:55 /dev/loop7
# mount /dev/loop0p1 /mnt
# ls /mnt
bench cdrom home lib mnt root srv usr
bin dev initrd lost+found opt sbin sys var
boot etc initrd.img media proc selinux tmp vmlinuz
# umount /mnt
# losetup -d /dev/loop0
Of course, the same behavior can be done using kpartx on a loop device,
but modifying loop avoids to stack several layers of block device (loop +
device mapper), this is a very light modification (40% of modifications
are to manage the new parameter).