Loopback FS question

Loopback FS question

Post by Bernhard van Staver » Tue, 30 Sep 1997 04:00:00



Hi all,

  I have a little problem, for my work I want to build a "tank server" (in
other words, this beast contains all sorts of various HD images to pump into
a workstation so I don't have to spend 3 hours installing *yurrp* Windows 95
and configuring it).

  Now I'm stuck. Is there any utility Out There(tm) that lets me make
iso9660 images of complete harddisks? Or directories?

  Or, can this be solved by dd-ing an entire harddisk to a file and when the
time comes to install some more things, to dd it back to a harddisk? Will
this have any impact on partition tables and other related crap? (I can
imagine if I have an image of a 1Gb disk and try to write it back to an
800Mb disk I'll have a little.. eh.. problem =]).

  I've read all "relevant" documentation and neither of it has any solutions
for my problem.


is buggy as anything.

  Thanks!

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1. Is loopback-based FS slower than normal FS?

        Is a filesystem based on the new loopback (not to be confused
with the loop back device related to TCP/IP networking) device of Linux
v2.0.0 slower, faster, or just the same as a "real" (i.e. on a real
partition on the HD) filesystem?

        I ask this because I got an idea for users using the UMSDOS
filesystem.  I'm thinking people use UMSDOS 'cause they don't want to
repartition their drives.  The price they pay for using UMSDOS is a
slower filesystem, and wasted disk space due to the way FAT stores data.

        I'm thinking, that UMSDOS users can mount a ext2fs formatted
loop-back based filesystem as thier /usr filesystem.  Would this offer
any advantages?  Assuming that using a loopback device is just as fast as
using a real partition, there would be a speed advantage.  Also, storage
efficiency may be increased; just make the size of loopback file a
multiple of cluster size.  

        Comments please .....

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