[nylug-talk] Disk imaging/cloning - sorry if someone asked this already

[Mordy Ovits]

On Thursday 01 May 2003 10:34 am, Peter C. Norton wrote:
> > Quick note to the unwary:  Don't do that while $DISK is mounted
>
> As long as there's not much activity, it'll still work as a
> quick+dirty.  You'll just have to fsck after you first re-image.

*shudder*.  That would terrify me.  Skewing the dd over time changes is a bad 
idea.  It's a gamble I wouldn't take, even if it would work most of the time.

> However, this leads to an interesting question: is there a way to
> mount an image as a disk - not just as partitions - then mount parts
> of the image as partitions.
>
> I.e. something like:
>
> mount -o dev=bigloop disk_image
> mount -t ext2 /dev/bigloop/0 /mnt/root
> mount -t ext2 /dev/bigloop/1 /mnt/root/boot
> mount -t ext2 /dev/bigloop/2 /mnt/root/usr

The partition splitting code doesn't run on loopback devices, but it could be 
made to be, somehow.  Good answer, eh? :-)

Mordy
-- 
Mordy Ovits
Network Security
Bloomberg L.P.