Loop devices
============
Increasing the number of loop devices
-------------------------------------
If you see "mount: could not find any free loop device" you have
to increase the number of loop devices by adding the following
to /etc/modprobe.conf on a 2.6 kernel (or /etc/modules.conf on
a 2.4 kernel).
----
options loop max_loop=64
----
To make this active, unmount all loop-mounts and then remove the loop
module from the kernel:
----
rmmod loop
----
Or alternatively, reboot your system :)
Verify the maximum number of loop devices
-----------------------------------------
You can verify the new maximum number of loop devices by doing:
dmesg | grep loop:
You should see something similar to:
Aug 9 16:36:20 emyn kernel: loop: loaded (max 256 devices)
Creating extra loop device entries
----------------------------------
Also make sure you have enough devices available. You can
check how many you have by doing:
ls -d /dev/loop*
An easy way to create more, is by doing:
for i in $(seq 0 255); do
mknod -m0660 /dev/loop$i b 7 $i
chown root.disk /dev/loop$i
done
You can have up to 256 loop devices mounted.
PS Unfortunately SLES9 has compiled the loop module inside the kernel,
therefor you have to add 'max_loop=64' to the kernel parameters directly
and you require a reboot.
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Please send me improvements to this document.