[TriLUG] /dev/loop*

[Benjamin Reed]

Chris Hedemark [chris at yonderway.com] wrote:
> I am mounting .iso filesystems as loopback file systems.  So far I have up to 
> /dev/loop7 mounted and all went well with them.  When I tried to mount to 
> /dev/loop8, I got the error message "mount: could not find any free loop 
> device".  However /dev/loop8 through /dev/loop15 available (and even mknod'ed 
> a /dev/loop16 just for the heck of it) and I still get the same error.  This 
> is a fairly stock Red Hat 7.2 host.  The whole point is I am trying to share 
> the ISO images for the IT staff at a client site to be able to get at for 
> burning support CD's, and at the same time actually nfs/smb export the 
> contents of each ISO as a read only filesystem of its own for network access 
> purposes.

By default, linux only allocates 8 loopback devices when it initializes (like,
at module-load time if it's loaded as a module).

If you are on a stock kernel, try unmounting all of your loop devices and remove
the loop module (rmmod loop), then do:

  modprobe loop max_loop=n

...where n is the number you want to allocate (max 255).

You can also add:

  options loop max_loop=n

to your /etc/modules.conf to make it automatically do it at the time of module
insertion.

-- 
Ben Reed a.k.a. Ranger Rick (ranger at befunk.com)
http://defiance.dyndns.org/ / http://radio.scenespot.org/
...if humanoids eat chicken, then obviously they'd eat their own
species.  Otherwise they'd just be picking on the chickens. -- Kryten