Create a Loopback filesystem from a file. Linux

If you need to have a new filesystem to test some operations on the server or you want a more flexible way of performing snapshots other than volume management, you can use loopback filesystems.

First Step. Create the Loopback file

dd if=/dev/zero of=/apps/test/loop db=1024 count=30720

This will create a 30 Mb file.

Second Step. Create a Loopback device.

First of all we will type

losetup -a

to list the current used devices.

losetup /dev/loop0 /apps/test/loop

Third Step. Create and mount a device.

mkfs -t ext3 -m 1 -v /dev/loop0

mkdir /virt_drive

mount /dev/loop0 /virt_drive