loopless

Latest version: %VERSION%

The xforty disk image utility.

Fully create bootable disk images without loopback mounts or root.

Currently supported on Linux and Mac OS X.

Install

Loopless can be installed via rubygems: 

gem install loopless

Which will install the ruby library and also install a loopless executable

The loopless command line binaries for each platform can also be downloaded from the linux and mac directories and run directly.

Synopsis

Create a 1GB bootable disk image for use with VirtualBox. This will produce a 10GB disk.img image file and a small disk.vmdk image description file.

On the command line

loopless disk.img create 1000000000
loopless disk.img create-gpt
loopless disk.img create-part
loopless disk.img part-info
loopless disk.img:1 mkfs 
echo 'SAY Hello World!' | loopless disk.img:1 write /syslinux.cfg 600
loopless disk.img:1 syslinux
loopless disk.img:1 ls
loopless disk.img:1 set-bootable true
loopless disk.img install-mbr
loopless disk.img create-vmdk disk.vmdk

Or in Ruby

require 'loopless'
Loopless.create("disk.img", 1000000000)
Loopless.create_gpt("disk.img")
Loopless.create_part("disk.img")
p Loopless.part_info("disk.img")
Loopless.mkfs("disk.img", 1)
Loopless.write("disk.img", 1, '/syslinux.cfg', '600', "SAY Hello World!" )
Loopless.syslinux("disk.img", 1)
p Loopless.ls("disk.img",1)
Loopless.set_bootable("disk.img",1, true)
Loopless.install_mbr("disk.img")
Loopless.create_vmdk("disk.img", 'disk.vmdk')

Usage

loopless is comprised of a number of subcommands:

Partitioning

  • loopless FILE create-gpt

Writes a blank GPT partition table to the disk image.

  • loopless FILE create-part [ PARTNUM [ START [ SIZE [ LABEL ] ] ] ]

Creates a partition on the image. The partition number will default to the next available, start will default to the next free sector after the last partition, and size will default to the remaining size on the disk. Start and size must be provided in units of 512 byte sectors.

  • loopless FILE part-info

Lists the partitions on the image according to the format: "PARTNUM\tSTART\tSIZE\tBOOTABLE\tLABEL\n"

  • loopless FILE:PARTNUM set-bootable true/false

Sets or unsets the legacy_boot GPT flag on the specified partition. This flag is used by syslinux to determine the boot partition.

Ext4

PART may either be a single number indicating GPT part number or a comma separated byte range

PATH must be the absolute path to file, including the initial '/'

  • loopless FILE[:PART] mkfs [ LABEL ]

Creates a new ext4 filesystem on the specified partition (or whole image if no partition specified).

  • loopless FILE[:PART] ls

List all files in filesystem

  • loopless FILE[:PART] rm PATH

Delete file and recursively remove empty directories.

  • loopless FILE[:PART] read PATH

Print file to stdout

  • loopless FILE[:PART] write PATH MODE

Overwrites file with content from stdin. Will also chmod the file to the given MODE and recursively chmod parent directories with MODE + the executable bit set where the read bit is (e.g. 640 would become 750 for parent directories ).

Syslinux

  • loopless FILE:PART syslinux

Sets up partition to boot with syslinux. Partition must be ext2/3/4 and should have a syslinux.cfg file to read from on boot.

  • loopless FILE install-mbr

Installs the syslinux gptmbr to the beginning of the file. This is necessary to boot.

Utility

  • loopless FILE create SIZE

Creates or overwrites file and truncates it to SIZE bytes.

  • loopless FILE create-vmdk VMDK_FILE

Creates a vmdk file for the disk image. This can be used to use the disk with VM hypervisors that don't support raw images like VirtualBox. The created file is only a few hundred bytes and just contains a reference to the actual disk image. It is generated with a random image id number that is used to identify the image so if regenerated it must be removed and re-added to VirtualBox.

Acknowledgements

This software is licensed under the GPL version 2 (See COPYING for full license) and includes or depends upon the copyrighted work of the following projects and authors:

loopless - http://gitlab.xforty.com/projects/loopless :

gptfdisk - https://sourceforge.net/projects/gptfdisk/:

e2fsprogs libuuid - http://e2fsprogs.sourceforge.net/:

lwext4 - https://github.com/gkostka/lwext4:

Syslinux - http://www.syslinux.org/: