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How to Mount a Specific Partition of a Xen File-backed Virtual Disk
By Tom Sandholm
Problem:
How to mount a specific partition of a XEN file-backed virtual disk from the host OS.
Solution:
- Locate the virtual-disk file and list it's content using fdisk. For example:
- Identify the particular partition you wish to mount. In this example I wish to mount ./hda1, which is my root partition. You will need to multiply the starting cylinder number times 512 to obtain the mount offset. For example, the hda1 partition is at cylinder address 1060290, so I will multiple 1060290 * 512, which yields, 542868480.
- Use the mount command with loopback and offset options to mount the virtual-disk partition, for example:
beast2:/extra/xen/images/vm2 # fdisk -luC 530 ./hda
Disk ./hda: 0 MB, 0 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 530 cylinders, total 0 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
./hda1 63 1060289 530113+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
./hda2 * 1060290 11550734 5245222+ 83 Linux
./hda3 11550735 16771859 2610562+ 83 Linux
Partition 3 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(1023, 254, 63) logical=(1043, 254, 63)
beast2:/extra/xen/images/vm2 #beast2:/extra/xen/images/vm2 # mount -o loop,offset=542868480 ./hda ./mnt beast2:/extra/xen/images/vm2 # ls ./mnt bin dev home lost+found mnt mnt2 proc root srv sys usr boot etc lib media mnt1 opt remote sbin success tmp var beast2:/extra/xen/images/vm2 #
Now you can see the content of my ./hda1 partition.
Environment:
Using XEN on openSuSE 10.2, on an EMachines AMD +3000, with 2GB ram.
Disclaimer: As with everything else at Cool Solutions, this content is definitely not supported by Novell (so don't even think of calling Support if you try something and it blows up).
It was contributed by a community member and is published "as is." It seems to have worked for at least one person, and might work for you. But please be sure to test, test, test before you do anything drastic with it.
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