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On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 08:57:40AM -0500, Phil Susi wrote:
> On 11/9/2016 3:26 PM, [email protected] wrote:
> > On Wed, Nov 09, 2016 at 10:57:23AM -0500, Phil Susi wrote:
> >> On 11/9/2016 9:43 AM, [email protected] wrote:
> >>> unless root has set up fstab accordingly, to name but one variant.
> >
> >> fstab has nothing to do with it. That only lets you mount and unmount
> >> existing filesystems.
> >
> > It sure has. The sysadmin can set up an fstab entry with the 'user'
> > option; she specifies a device (or an UUID, or a label) and a
> > mount point. The (regular) user can then mount, wihout any special
> > privileges.
>
> That's what I just said. This discussion isn't about mounting and
> unmounting though, but rather is about partitioning.
Sorry. We're going in circles here: mounting: needs privileges (makes
sense), partitioning: doesn't need extra privileges (just an operation
on a bunch of bytes).
> > Unless you know its offset whithin the containing block device, to which
> > you do have access (in the mentioned cases of an OS file viz. a device).
> > You don't need any loop device for that. You need he loop device for
> > *mounting* the file system, not for mkfs.
>
> Knowing the offset does not help since mkfs does not accept an offset
> parameter; it expects the partition device.
This is from the mkfs.ext2 man page:
-E extended-options
Set extended options for the filesystem. Extended options
are comma separated, and may take an argument using the equals
('=') sign. The -E option used to be -R in earlier versions of
mke2fs. The -R option is still accepted for backwards compatibility,
but is deprecated. The following extended options are supported:
[...]
offset=offset
Create the filesystem at an offset from the beginning of the
device or file. This can be useful when creating disk images
for virtual machines.
regards
- -- t
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