Using loopback devices in RAID?


 
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Special Forums Hardware Filesystems, Disks and Memory Using loopback devices in RAID?
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Old 04-16-2003
Question Using loopback devices in RAID?

Hopefully I am posting this silly question in the right place...

I was wondering about the possibility of using loopback files on a physical disk to create virtual disks that could shrink or grow as needed. Something like RAID 0, but instead of using block devices, just using files. If I need more space, I just add another loopback file to the pool. If I don't need it anymore, I just remove it. But doing either of these things doesn't damage the data. Does anyone know if this is possible?

Similarly, I was also wondering is it's possible to mount multiple NFS or Samba shares to one location and have them all appear as a single "mounted device". For instance, if I want to mount th C$ share on an NT box and 10.0.1.1:/home on /mnt/files. Is there a way to do this?

Thanks.
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lofs(7FS)							   File Systems 							 lofs(7FS)

NAME
lofs - loopback virtual file system SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/param.h> #include <sys/mount.h> int mount (const char* dir, const char* virtual, int mflag, lofs, NULL, 0); DESCRIPTION
The loopback file system device allows new, virtual file systems to be created, which provide access to existing files using alternate pathnames. Once the virtual file system is created, other file systems can be mounted within it, without affecting the original file sys- tem. However, file systems which are subsequently mounted onto the original file system are visible to the virtual file system, unless or until the corresponding mount point in the virtual file system is covered by a file system mounted there. virtual is the mount point for the virtual file system. dir is the pathname of the existing file system. mflag specifies the mount options; the MS_DATA bit in mflag must be set. If the MS_RDONLY bit in mflag is not set, accesses to the loop back file system are the same as for the underlying file system. Otherwise, all accesses in the loopback file system will be read-only. All other mount(2) options are inherited from the underlying file systems. A loopback mount of '/' onto /tmp/newroot allows the entire file system hierarchy to appear as if it were duplicated under /tmp/newroot, including any file systems mounted from remote NFS servers. All files would then be accessible either from a pathname relative to '/' or from a pathname relative to /tmp/newroot until such time as a file system is mounted in /tmp/newroot, or any of its subdirectories. Loopback mounts of '/' can be performed in conjunction with the chroot(2) system call, to provide a complete virtual file system to a process or family of processes. Recursive traversal of loopback mount points is not allowed. After the loopback mount of /tmp/newroot, the file /tmp/newroot/tmp/newroot does not contain yet another file system hierarchy; rather, it appears just as /tmp/newroot did before the loopback mount was performed (for example, as an empty directory). Examples lofs file systems are mounted using: mount -F lofs /tmp /mnt SEE ALSO
lofiadm(1M), mount(1M), chroot(2), mount(2), sysfs(2), vfstab(4), lofi(7D) WARNINGS
Loopback mounts must be used with care; the potential for confusing users and applications is enormous. A loopback mount entry in /etc/vfstab must be placed after the mount points of both directories it depends on. This is most easily accomplished by making the loop- back mount entry the last in /etc/vfstab. SunOS 5.10 10 Apr 2001 lofs(7FS)