Possible to mount the Pi OS .img file using loopback?

Question

HiI've downloaded  used unxz toextract the .img file, and I'm trying to mount it so I can have a lookat some of the files in it. I was trying to avoid having to write theimage to an SD card. $ file   DOS/MBR boot sector; partition 1 : ID=0xc, start-CHS (0x40,0,1), end-CHS (0x3ff,3,32), startsector 8192, 1048576 sectors; partition 2 : ID=0x83, start-CHS (0x3ff,3,32), end-CHS (0x3ff,3,32), startsector 1056768, 9297920 sectors$ sudo losetup -f --show  /dev/loop0$ sudo mount -t auto /dev/loop0  /mnt/image/mount: /mnt/image: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/loop0, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.I thought these image files were supposed to contain mountablefilesystems, and I'm (almost) sure I've done this before with raspbianand Ubuntu images --- am I doing something wrong above?

Theo · Accepted Answer

The image file has multiple partitions, so you need to mount the partitions within the image, not the raw image itself. You either need:

$ sudo losetup -f -P --show 2023-10-10-raspios-bookworm-armhf.img

and you'll get devices per partition: /dev/loop0p1, loop0p2, etc

or, on an existing loopback device,

$ sudo partprobe /dev/loop0

and it'll create the partition devices. Then you can mount them:

$ sudo mkdir -p /mnt/boot /mnt/root $ sudo mount /dev/loop0p1 /mnt/boot $ sudo mount /dev/loop0p2 /mnt/root

Theo

Adam Funk · Answer

Brilliant, thanks very much!

Possible to mount the Pi OS .img file using loopback?

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