On Wed, 27 Feb 2013 13:23:23 +1100 "Fajar A. Nugraha" <l...@fajar.net> wrote:
> Not to mention the hassle in accessing the data if it resides on a > partition inside the file (e.g. you need losetup + kpartx to access it, > and you must remember to do the reverse when you're finished with it). > > In zfsonlinux it's very easy to do so since a zvol is treated pretty > much like a disk, and whenever there's a partition inside a zvol, a > coressponding device noed is also created automatically. So I'd say what you (we) need is a generic Linux kernel framework that would allow treating any regular file pretty much like a disk. Not some filesystem-specific block device emulation kludge. Btw some years ago there was a patchset adding proper automatic partition support to 'loop'; but it seems like that went nowhere, and I have no idea why something this useful did not end up being added into the mainline kernel. -- With respect, Roman
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