Creating a loop device on Linux
Just a quick note so I don't forget in 2 minutes from now.
1. Create a file and specify the size for it - in this example the filename will be moosefs01.img and the size 800GB:
cd /root
truncate -s 800G moosefs01.img
2. Create a filesystem inside the file - in this case we're creating an ext4 type filesystem:
mkfs.ext4 moosefs01.img
The above will give you a warning like this:
mke2fs 1.42.9 (28-Dec-2013)
moosefs01.img is not a block special device.
Proceed anyway? (y,n)
That's fine - type 'y' and press 'Enter'
3. Create a mountpoint:
mkdir /media/moosefs01
4. Mount the filesystem to the mountpoint:
mount /root/moosefs01.img /media/moosefs01
5. And here's the mount:
df -hT /media/moosefs01
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/loop0 ext4 20G 45M 19G 1% /media/moosefs01