I have a laptop with HDD which had issues with booting (windows10). I assumed that Windows just failed some way. I've booted from LinuxLiveUSB and tried to dump the disk using dd. DD failed on 85GB because of I/O error. I've read that it is sign of bad block, so I've used NOERROR flag next time. During that process dd now throws only I/O errors. I've checked disk in fdisk -l, but see only one partition (was 4 before the whole operation) with message that there was no other partition or something (sorry I can't remember correctly). For the next reboot to LiveUSB, fdisk detect no sda whatsoever. So I think, disk is dead. I still have 270GB image (closed DD because of never-ending I/O errors) of 1TB disk. I want to recover data from this image, but neither OSFMount on Windows nor losetup/kpartx can mount Windows partition from this image (OSFmount just hangs and linux tools do nothing). Is there any process to prepare the image in a way to read the data from it? Thanks.

I backed up my old device using dd and am trying to access its contents. The following has been attempted:

usr@pop-os:~/Backups$ sudo mkdir /mnt/
mount -o loop .image /mnt/
mount: /mnt/: failed to setup loop device for /home/usr/Backups/.image.

The file was created by using the following command:

sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=.image status=progress

usr@pop-os:~/Backups$ fdisk -l .image
Disk .image: 29.12 GiB, 31268536320 bytes, 61071360 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x38a56bdb

Device                              Boot  Start      End  Sectors  Size Id Type
.image1 *     10240   962559   952320  465M 83 Linux
.image2      962560 61071326 60108767 28.7G 83 Linux
usr@pop-os:~/Backups$

How can I explore the contents of a .image file?

# General overview I try to install the [Mobian](https://mobian-project.org/) OS on my Pinephone thought the [dd’s method](https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/PINE64/PinePhone#Method_3:_dd) as described in the official Debian documentation. Basically, I have to make a dd from an image to a partition in the SD card. # The problem But at each try, the partition is corrupted and unusable. # The process ### What I did As I said, I just follow the dd’s method of the documentation. So : 1. I formatted a partition located in /dev/sdb1 in my SD card with:

# mkfs.ext4 -F -O 64bit -L 'system' '/dev/sdb1'
mke2fs 1.47.0 (5-Feb-2023)
/dev/sdb1 contains a ext4 file system labelled 'system'
        last mounted on Wed Jun 25 18:44:21 2025
Creating filesystem with 28703488 4k blocks and 7176192 inodes
Filesystem UUID: e7df3b8b-a2fa-4cce-a833-5fd86456cad8
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
        32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
        4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872

Allocating group tables: done
Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (131072 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

2. Then, I get the image and unpack it:

$ wget https://images.mobian.org/pinephone/mobian-pinephone-phosh-12.0.img.gz 
$ unp mobian-pinephone-phosh-12.0.img.gz

3. So, I copied the image to the partition /dev/sdb1:

# dd bs=64k if=mobian-pinephone-phosh-12.0.img of=/dev/sdb1 status=progress 
5989138432 octets (6,0 GB, 5,6 GiB) copiés, 265 s, 22,6 MB/s
91552+1 enregistrements lus
91552+1 enregistrements écrits
6000000000 octets (6,0 GB, 5,6 GiB) copiés, 265,823 s, 22,6 MB/s

### What I got At this point, when the process reach it end, the partition appear as defective. 1. I check /dev/sdb1 with fsk.ext4 :

# fsck.ext4 /dev/sdb1
e2fsck 1.47.0 (5-Feb-2023)
ext2fs_open2: Bad magic number in super-block
fsck.ext4: Superblock invalid, trying backup blocks...
fsck.ext4: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sdb1

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a valid ext2/ext3/ext4
filesystem.  If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2/ext3/ext4
filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock
is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
    e2fsck -b 8193 
 or
    e2fsck -b 32768 

Found a gpt partition table in /dev/sdb1

2. I inspected what happened with dmesg but found nothing special:

# dmesg -T
[mer. 25 juin 18:44:02 2025] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] 244285440 512-byte logical blocks: (125 GB/116 GiB)
[mer. 25 juin 18:44:02 2025] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[mer. 25 juin 18:44:02 2025] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
[mer. 25 juin 18:44:02 2025] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page found
[mer. 25 juin 18:44:02 2025] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[mer. 25 juin 18:44:02 2025]  sdb: sdb1
[mer. 25 juin 18:44:02 2025] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
[mer. 25 juin 18:44:02 2025] EXT4-fs (sdb1): recovery complete
[mer. 25 juin 18:44:02 2025] EXT4-fs (sdb1): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Quota mode: none.
[mer. 25 juin 18:44:18 2025] EXT4-fs (sdb1): unmounting filesystem.
[mer. 25 juin 18:44:18 2025]  sdb: sdb1
[mer. 25 juin 18:44:18 2025] EXT4-fs (sdb1): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Quota mode: none.
[mer. 25 juin 18:44:43 2025] EXT4-fs (sdb1): unmounting filesystem.

However, I tried the same process from another computer and get something more verbose with dmesg (in the this case mmcblk0 is the relevant partition):

[mar. juin 24 20:11:57 2025]  mmcblk0: p1 
[mar. juin 24 20:11:57 2025]  mmcblk0: p1 
[mar. juin 24 20:11:57 2025]  mmcblk0: p1 
[mar. juin 24 20:11:58 2025]  mmcblk0: p1 
[mar. juin 24 20:13:31 2025] mmc0: card 0001 removed
[mar. juin 24 20:13:33 2025] mmc0: cannot verify signal voltage switch
[mar. juin 24 20:13:33 2025] mmc0: new ultra high speed SDR104 SDXC card at address 0001
[mar. juin 24 20:13:33 2025] mmcblk0: mmc0:0001 SD128 116 GiB 
[mar. juin 24 20:13:33 2025]  mmcblk0: p1 
[mar. juin 24 20:13:38 2025] audit: type=1400 audit(1750788819.286:29): apparmor="DENIED" operation="open" profile="/usr/bin/evince-thumbnailer" name="/tmp/tumbler-X31LB82.png" pid=13008 comm="evince-thumbnai" requested_mask="wc" denied_mask="wc" fsuid=1000 ouid=1000
[mar. juin 24 20:13:39 2025] audit: type=1400 audit(1750788819.666:30): apparmor="DENIED" operation="open" profile="/usr/bin/evince-thumbnailer" name="/tmp/tumbler-XD3SP82.png" pid=13013 comm="evince-thumbnai" requested_mask="wc" denied_mask="wc" fsuid=1000 ouid=1000
[mar. juin 24 20:15:29 2025] EXT4-fs (mmcblk0p5): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Quota mode: none.
[mar. juin 24 20:16:22 2025] JBD2: Spotted dirty metadata buffer (dev = mmcblk0p5, blocknr = 1). There's a risk of filesystem corruption in case of system crash.
[mar. juin 24 20:16:26 2025] EXT4-fs error (device mmcblk0p5): ext4_map_blocks:607: inode #8: block 15237146: comm jbd2/mmcblk0p5-: lblock 26 mapped to illegal pblock 15237146 (length 1)
[mar. juin 24 20:16:26 2025] jbd2_journal_bmap: journal block not found at offset 26 on mmcblk0p5-8
[mar. juin 24 20:16:26 2025] Aborting journal on device mmcblk0p5-8.
[mar. juin 24 20:16:26 2025] EXT4-fs error (device mmcblk0p5): ext4_journal_check_start:83: comm ext4lazyinit: Detected aborted journal
[mar. juin 24 20:16:27 2025] EXT4-fs (mmcblk0p5): Remounting filesystem read-only
[mar. juin 24 20:23:19 2025] EXT4-fs (mmcblk0p5): unmounting filesystem.
[mar. juin 24 20:23:42 2025]  mmcblk0: p1 
[mar. juin 24 20:23:42 2025]  mmcblk0: p1 
[mar. juin 24 20:23:42 2025]  mmcblk0: p1 
[mar. juin 24 20:23:43 2025]  mmcblk0:
[mar. juin 24 20:23:43 2025]  mmcblk0:
[mar. juin 24 20:23:43 2025]  mmcblk0: p1
[mar. juin 24 20:23:43 2025]  mmcblk0: p1

# The question Obviously, I just ask what happened, why it doesn’t work? And how to fix it and install Mobian on this SD card?

I work a lot with imaged drives, meaning a do a dd-copy of the drive in question and then work on the image instead of the drive itself. For most work, I use kpartx to map the drive's partitions to a device under /dev/mapper/. What I'm wondering here is if there's a way to find which of the mapping belong to which image. Consider this: root@vyvyan:/tmp# kpartx -a -v Image1 add map loop1p1 (254:4): 0 10240 linear /dev/loop1 2048 add map loop1p2 (254:5): 0 10240 linear /dev/loop1 12288 add map loop1p3 (254:6): 0 52848 linear /dev/loop1 22528 root@vyvyan:/tmp# kpartx -a -v Image2 add map loop2p1 (254:7): 0 33508 linear /dev/loop2 2048 add map loop2p2 (254:8): 0 39820 linear /dev/loop2 35556 Now, let's say I forget which image went to which mapping. Is there a way to let kpartx - or the kernel, or anything else - tell me which image goes where? *EDIT* Also, if I accidentally rm the image-file while kpartx has added the mappings, how do you remove the mappings? kpartx wants the actual image to be present.

I have a Linux image from which I've extracted a rootfs.img file. The file seems to contain files and information. I would like to "boot into it". File contents:

bin
dev
etc
home
lib
media
mnt
proc
run
sbin
service
sys
tmp
usr
var
lib64

How can I install a bootloader to boot it? I've tried getting a live Ubuntu image, adding a partition, and placing the contents of rootfs.img inside the partition and running "Boot Repair", which did find the other system as another bootable Linux, but I can't boot into it, it seems like I'm missing something

how to copy a HD to another if the CPU is freezing after a few GB ? I had to copy w11 of a friend notebook from a 128GB nvme to a 1TB nvme. I put nvne128gb in a usb adapter and the nvme1TB inside the notebook. The only cost free and granted way to copy the hd was thu linux (that i use everyday). I boot it in a usb liveCD ubuntu 24.04. when I try to copy using gparted or dd, the pc freezes everytime around 15GB :( What is going on?

I am trying to mount an image file which has been downloaded by coldsnap for a snapshot of AWS, but I am unable to mount it in Amazon Linux 2. I Tried multiple commands as mount -o loop disk.img /mnt/disk, losetup -f disk.img && mount /dev/loop0 /mnt/disk but it's not working:

-shellsession
[root@ip-172-31-29-177 ec2-user]# mount -t ext4 /dev/loop0 /tmp/disk/

mount: /tmp/disk: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/loop0, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.

Can anyone please help me on this error?

I created a multi-boot USB stick to load various ISO files, which can either be live systems or used to install different Linux distributions.

sda
 -sda1     1M      | BIOS Boot partition to store MBR
 -sda2     64M     | ESP for UEFI boot
 -sda3     100G    | EXT4 for ISO & IMAGE

I can easily start ISO files such as Debian, Ubuntu, Kali or other distributions from it, using the corresponding menuentry in the /efi/boot/grub/grub.cfg Now I have an disk-image created with dd from a whole USB stick where Debian is installed. However, it's not a true ISO or image but rather a disk-image (snapshot/backup) of the USB stick with all its partitions, with the named example debian1.iso or debian2.img I've now copied this file to the partition sda3 with the other correct ISO's. I created the following menuentry with chainloader, but on the first attempt, GRUB simply restarts the boot process, and on the second attempt, I get an 'invalid signature' error.

menuentry "Chainload GRUB from USB Image debian1.iso" {
    loopback loop (hd0,3)/debian1.iso
    set root=(loop,1)
    chainloader +1
}

menuentry "Boot Debian from ISO on USB (UEFI)" {
    set root=(hd0,3)
    loopback loop /debian2.img
    set root=(loop,1)
    chainloader /EFI/debian/grubx64.efi
}

How can I start this disk-image from GRUB and what does the menu entry look like? It might be possible if the disk-image is written to a separate partition, but I don’t want that. Here are entries I found, but they mostly deal with ISO files. - GRUB2: boot to a second (another) hard disk - Using a bootable live cd disk image mounted on the hard drive - Booting an EXT4 image file from GRUB2 - how to chainload from image file which contain multiple partitions? - install grub on disk image - How to boot Linux from image on disk or "Poor Man's Install"? - GRUB Boot ISO/disk image from NTFS partition - MEMDISK can boot floppy images, hard disk images and some ISO images. At first, I found that it wasn’t possible, but then I discovered that it might be possible with memdisk or GRUB2 using loopback and overlayfs. So, it is indeed possible. **Memdisk** > Memdisk is primarily intended for temporary boot environments, > such as starting installation programs or diagnostic tools where > permanent storage is not required or desired. It is very useful if you just want to test the disk image. **loopback and overlayfs** > You can boot a disk image with GRUB’s loopback function and make the > filesystem writable by combining it with overlayfs. An overlay layer > is placed on top of the read-only image, writing changes to a separate > partition or file. This way, the original image remains unchanged, and > you can save modifications. I need to figure out how to handle the changes if it works. My GRUB is installed on a USB stick without an operating system, so I can't use grub-mkconfig. So I have to make all the changes manually. Is it possible to boot a disk-image via GRUB that is writable, make changes, and have those changes written directly to the image and how? Is there another way besides memdisk to boot where I can make changes? If it works with loopback and overlayfs, what do I need to consider, how do I set it up, and what does the menuentry looks like? Is there some kind of small hack, or should I load additional files onto the GRUB stick to make this work and how? The disk image itself also has GRUB, and the operating system on it is encrypted with LUKS. Is it maybe possible to unpack the image into memory with GRUB, call GRUB from the disk image, unlock LUKS, boot the OS, make the changes, and save the whole thing as a new disk image to some partition?

In Ubuntu, I have mounted a raw disk .img file as a loop device that contains a LUKS encrypted LVM with an Ubuntu install on it. It is mounted like so: (output is from lsblk -o NAME,PKNAME,KNAME,FSTYPE,SIZE /dev/loop0

`
NAME                      PKNAME KNAME FSTYPE        SIZE
loop0                            loop0               240G
├─loop0p1                 loop0  dm-11 ext4          487M
├─loop0p2                 loop0  dm-12                 1K
└─loop0p5                 loop0  dm-13 crypto_LUKS 239.5G
  └─cloneluks             dm-13  dm-14 LVM2_member 239.5G
    ├─ubuntuclone-lv_swap dm-14  dm-15                 8G
    └─ubuntuclone-lv_root dm-14  dm-16 ext4        231.5G

` Is there any command that I can use in a script to return the root "block device" (I'm not sure if that's the correct term), when I give the mounted LV name? I was hoping that lsblk -no pkname /dev/ubuntuclone/lv_root would work, but it outputs nothing - using kname gives me dm-16. I want to get to loop0. I also saw [this answer](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/308724/52247) which implied I could use "$(basename "$(readlink -f /dev/VG/LV)")", but I couldn't work out how to use it:

`
 dev=/dev/ubuntuclone/lv_root ; echo "$(basename "$(readlink -f $dev)")"

` outputs dm-16. I can't work out how to get "past" the crypto_LUKS container. This is what I'm looking for: for input: /dev/ubuntuclone/lv_root or ubuntuclone-lv_root I would like to get output: /dev/loop0 Thanks. edit: I think using lsblk --json | jq might be exactly what I want, but I'm having a lot of trouble working out the correct incantations for jq...

I can manually mount an image file (containing a valid filesystem) with:

-sh
vnconfig vnd0 file.img
mount /dev/vnd0c /mnt/

**Question**: Where should I put the vnconfig command in OpenBSD? I updated fstab to have the mount, but vnconfig is still a mystery. Where should I put it? In a startup script?

I've been handed a set of disk images which apparently are Linux MD RAID, asking if I could "reassemble" them. Using a Linux kernel it's as easy as attaching them into partition scanned loopback devices (losetup -fP ) and then have the kernel assemble them, by issuing the right mdadm stanza. However, I was wondering if there's a tool that would take a bunch of Linux MD RAID images assembling and digesting it into a mountable disk image file. My main motivation is, that assembling via kernel might cause user whoopsies on a system that nominally uses MD RAID and you'd have to spin up a dedicated VM if you'd want to isolate the process. And this seems like a kludge that rubs me the wrong way.

Just to be clear: linux tool unsquashfs(1) takes as input the name of a squashfs filesystem **image** file. In other words the file we pass to it is a "bit by bit" image of a squashfs filesystem stored within blocks of an disk (or RAM disk). Basically it *extracts* files and directories within the squashfs filesystem into a directory on the "host system" passed to it by its name. Is the above correct? Thanks.

I'm looking to physically replace my current linux boot hard drive with a new hard drive, but want to 'copy' the existing boot drive contents onto that new drive. I assume the best way to do this is to create an image of the current one and then restore it onto the new drive. I'd appreciate some details on doing this. In particular, I assume that the fstab will need to be edited for the new drive after restoring the image onto it. Thanks!

I'm in a situation where I want the kind of guarantees of getting every bit of data and metadata about a tree of files that might normally require using dump/restore. I need *everything* uids, gids, permissions, hardlinks, attributes, xattrs, and anything else I might not even know about. And it would save me a lot of effort if I could do this for a tree instead of an image file, so dump is not the preferred path. Is there any simplified option or set of options for GNU Tar that guarantee it will catch everything? Or am I stuck with --xattrs-include='*' or --xattrs-include='*.*' and hoping I know everything?

I have some LVM logical volumes in a machine, and I would like to create backup images (.img) stored in another machine. 1. Most volumes are LVM-Thin, and I cannot resize the volumes before creating the images. Then, how to keep the image files as small as possible? 1. Is dd capable of creating a thin image of a volume? 1. In addition to dd, which other tools can I use for this task?

I have a bash script that is supposed to download a Windows 10 iso file from Microsoft and then change the names of two files in that iso in order to remove the "Press any key to boot from this CD/DVD..." prompt. Essentially I just want to swap the file names of these two files: So cdboot.efi becomes cdboot_noprompt.efi. And cdboot_noprompt.efi becomes cdboot.efi. I know I could mount the image, copy the the contents somewhere, modify it to my liking and then use mkisofs/genisoimage to create a new iso, somewhat like this:

sudo mount -o loop -t iso9660 /path/to/windows.iso /mnt
sudo cp /mnt/ /mnt_copy/
cd /mnt_copy/efi/microsoft/boot
sudo mv cdboot.efi tmp.efi
sudo mv cdboot_noprompt.efi cdboot.efi
sudo mv tmp.efi cdboot_noprompt.efi
sudo genisoimage -J -joliet-long -r -allow-lowercase -allow-multidot -o "/path/to/new/windows.iso" "/mnt_copy/"
# And then magically make the iso bootable again. No idea how this would be done.

but I'd like to avoid all this unnecessary overhead.

I created my OS on my Raspberry pi 2 zero W on an SDcard. Now I want to distribute it so I made an Image from the SDCard (using dd). But the two cards behave differently especially at startup. Did this happen to you before? is there a better way to make an identical copy?

I have a 1 TB NVMe disk with Ubuntu 22 installed with vanilla options, except I used LVM, and enabled LUKS. I'd like to image the disk for easy restores. Simply backing up the files is not enough for me, because I also want to revert partition/LVM information when restoring. However, I don't want to end up with a 1 TB image file that is 95% empty space. How do I get Clonezilla to do this? I can unlock/mount the encrypted volumes, and image them, but that doesn't maintain the underlying partition structure. If I image the underlying partitions, it images the LUKS partitions like they're just a 900ish GB slab of binary. What's a workaround here?

I have a disk image that is meant to be flashed and run as a live-USB. Is it possible to boot from this image in Grub in a similar way to booting from an ISO with chainloader+1 ? How would the menu entry in grub look, for example?

I've got a disk image that I need shortened slightly (long story - but it deals with variances in flash drive sizes). The partitions are *already* short enough, but the drive size is not. Basically, I have a disk image that is 15678308352 bytes (30621696 sectors). I'm wanting to reduce the disk image size to 15678292992 bytes (30621666 sectors). The last sector being used by any "real" partition is 30621662 (I'm fine ending there, too, but I padded it by 4 sectors just to be safe). In any case, I'm wanting to resize the partition tables, but I don't really know how, especially since the GPT table is inside a "protected MBR". Here's the output of fdisk showing the protected MBR:

fdisk mydisk.img 
Disk: mydisk.img	geometry: 1906/255/63 [30621696 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE    0   0   2 - 1023 255  63 [         1 -   30621695] 
 2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused      
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused      
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused

Here's the output of gdisk showing the GPT info:

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.10

Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present


Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help): p
Disk mydisk.img: 30621696 sectors, 14.6 GiB
Sector size (logical): 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): BD99B4B8-8070-0648-AEA4-B28BCD949EB7
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 30621662
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 18398 sectors (9.0 MiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1            8192          249855   118.0 MiB   8300  primary
   2          260096        30621662   14.5 GiB    8300  primary

As you can see, I have plenty of room to shrink the disk but I just don't know how. I tried manually editing the MBR partition size in hexedit, but then I got all sorts of warnings on the GPT partition. Any ideas?