[NTLUG:Discuss] mounting an image of an entire drive

[Robert Citek]

On Friday, December 5, 2003, at 04:13  PM, Robert Citek wrote:
> Is there a way to mount the disk image and then mount the partition 
> within that image?

The short answer is "no".  A more accurate answer is "sort of".  A 
complete answer is below.

> If so, how?

You do not mount the drive and then mount the image.  Instead, you 
simply mount the partition from within the image.  If the image is 
uncompressed, you can use it directly.  If the image is compressed, you 
have to uncompress it first, but not necessarily all of it.  For full 
details see:

   http://www.cwelug.org/cgi-bin/wiki.cgi?DiskImage

Some key points:

- dd can be used to image a disk
- sfdisk can be used to read the partition table from the image file
- dd can be used to extract a partition from a disk image by using the 
skip option
- you can mount a partition that is in a disk image by using the offset 
option to losetup
- you don't need the entire partition from the disk image in order to 
mount it

Thanks to all for the links and pointers in the off-list posts.

Regards,
- Robert