Accessing the contents of a KVM disk image file

KVM can use either an entire partition to simulate a disk for the guest operating system, or a single file. By default the file type used is a "raw" file compatible with other virtualization systems, like Xen.

In order to mount the image file of the guest OS we need to first map a loop device to it.

The command  losetup is used to associate files with loop devices. First check what the next available loopback device is with the  -f argument which is used to find the next available device:

1 2	[root@server1 ~] losetup -f /dev/loop7

In this case there are no other loop devices and /dev/loop7 is available. This can then be associated with the VM image file:

1	[root@server1 ~] losetup /dev/loop7 /opt/vm/centos .img

Within a single image file there may be multiple partitions (e.g. /, /boot, etc.). The partition table can be read from the new (loop) device and individual devices for each partition created. This is done with the kpartx command (it creates map devices from device partition tables):

1 2 3

[root@server1 ~] kpartx -av /dev/loop7 add map loop0p1 : 0 7727202 linear /dev/loop7 45 add map loop0p3 : 0 449757 linear /dev/loop7 4756328

This created the following files in /dev/mapper directory:

1 2 3

[root@server1 ~] ls -la /dev/mapper brw-rw---- 1 root disk 253, 4 2007-11-24 14:56 loop7p1 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 253, 5 2007-11-24 14:56 loop7p3

Now we can mount the files as we would normally do:

1	[root@server1 ~] mount /dev/mapper/loop7p1 /mnt

To revert back execute the following in this order:

1 2 3 4 5

[root@server1 ~] unmount /mnt [root@server1 ~] kpartx -dv /dev/loop7 del devmap : loop7p1 del devmap : loop7p3 [root@server1 ~] losetup -d /dev/loop7