Re: "loopback mount" hard-drive image created with dd?

Yahya Mohammad wrote: Thanks for the tip! I didn't know you could mount a whole disk image as
loopback, and see the partition table with fdisk. I always printed the
partition table before making the disk image.

> I second that, I'm curious to know if it works

It does, I have done it before, but there's a special case for the first
partition of the disk. According to your output of fdisk, it is supposed
to start at cylinder 1. However, if you run fdisk with the -u option
(giving the positions and sizes in sectors), you get the following:

(example)
# fdisk -lu /dev/loop0

Disk /dev/loop0: 10.0 GB, 10056130560 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1299 cylinders, total 19640880 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc1afc1af

       Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/loop0p1   *          63     4097519     2048728+   b  W95 FAT32
/dev/loop0p2         4097520     8195039     2048760    5  Extended
/dev/loop0p5         4097583     8195039     2048728+   b  W95 FAT32

That is, the first partition starts at sector 63, i.e. at an offset
value of 63 * 512 = 32256.

> oh, and make a backup just in case :)

And mount the filesystem read-only with the "ro" mount option.

-- Remy