Restore a partimage backup to loopback

Sunday, 07 September 2008 21:57

dd how-to linux loopback losetup partimage

You need a file to mount as a HDD device - using DD, the following will instantly create a file of SIZE Gigabytes:
- ```
dd if=/dev/zero of=myharddisk.img bs=1000 count=0 seek=$[1000*1000*SIZE]
```

 You need to make this file look like a block device (Choose a free /dev/loop device):

```
losetup /dev/loop0 myharddisk.img
```

Start partimage manually from the command line, pointing to your loop device
- ```
partimage /dev/loop0 backupfile.000
```
Remove the file from the loop device
- ```
losetup -d /dev/loop0
```

Mount the new file on a directory

mount myharddisk.img /path/to/dir -o loop

Enjoy the backup's files

Comments (2)

Minor corrrection

2Thursday, 21 January 2010 14:09

I believe Step 3 should be "partimage restore /dev/loop0 backupfile.000"

Thanks for the nice tutorial. You might appreciate this master-class level use of loopbacks and kvm here:

http://www.wand.net.nz/~smr26/wordpress/2008/08/28/kvm-the-hard-way/

Thanks

Saturday, 30 January 2010 18:02

Jason Kendall

Yep, I think your 100% correct - thanks for the correction. And a nice link to add to my list :)

What if not enough space

1Saturday, 18 October 2008 06:38

It looks great tip. But in my particular case, I have no device with sufficient space to uncompress my backup (I want to restore from the bzipped backup of my largest device).

Don't you know a way of directly mounting my partimage file or its uncompressed version?