Bug 5333

Summary:	Please obsolete the loopback device
Product:	IO/Storage	Reporter:	Hadmut Danisch (hadmut)
Component:	LVM2/DM	Assignee:	Alasdair G Kergon (agk)
Status:	REJECTED WILL_NOT_FIX
Severity:	low	CC:	breeves
Priority:	P2
Hardware:	i386
OS:	Linux
Kernel Version:	2.6.13	Subsystem:
Regression:	---	Bisected commit-id:

Description Hadmut Danisch 2005-09-30 02:50:29 UTC

Hi,

this is rather a wish than a bug report. 

When working with encrypted devices and partitions in files mounted through the
loopback device and device mapper encryption I found it annyoing to tie the
loopback and the dm together, due to it's different user interface etc.

It would be nice to have a device mapper module to directly turn regular files
into block devices like the loop device does, but without the restriction to 8
loopbacks and with the usual dm user interface.

regards
Hadmut

Comment 1 Alasdair G Kergon 2005-09-30 07:19:29 UTC

Actually, there is some code floating around that does this - I hope to get it
integrated into the dm development tree soon.

Comment 2 Alasdair G Kergon 2007-11-13 05:06:37 UTC

See the patches at:
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/agk/patches/2.6/editing/dm-loop*

Comment 3 Roland Kletzing 2008-01-27 10:12:02 UTC

as this has recently posted to lkml - can we have this in mainline, please?
i like choice/options :)

Comment 4 Roland Kletzing 2008-01-29 14:12:39 UTC

apparently, it`s in -mm now, fine :)

Comment 5 Alan 2008-09-22 12:21:00 UTC

Closing as will not fix - dm stuff is upstream but obsoleting loop isn't likely to occur and should raised on LKML not here