Howto find the file for a loopmounted device?

Question

Question:

if I loopmount a file, like this

mount /volumes/jfs.dsk /mnt/jfs -t jfs -o loop

then what happens behind the scenes is

losetup /dev/loop1 /volumes/jfs.dsk
mount /dev/loop1 /mnt/jfs -t jfs -o loop

My question now:
If I have /dev/loop1, how can I find which file this device belongs to ?
e.g. given "/dev/loop1" as input, how can I get back /volumes/jfs.dsk ?

Answer 1

Since nobody knew the concrete answer, I answer it here as reference for others:

public static string loopfile_from_sysfs(string device)
{
    string res = null;
    Mono.Unix.Native.Stat st;
    System.IntPtr f;

    //if (stat(device, &st) || !S_ISBLK(st.st_mode))
    //if (System.Convert.ToBoolean(Mono.Unix.Native.Syscall.stat(device, out st)) || !S_ISBLK((int) st.st_mode))
    //  return null;

    Mono.Unix.Native.Syscall.stat(device, out st);

    const string _PATH_SYS_DEVBLOCK = "/sys/dev/block";
    string strPath = string.Format("{0}/{1}:{2}/loop/backing_file", _PATH_SYS_DEVBLOCK, gnu_dev_major(st.st_rdev), gnu_dev_minor(st.st_rdev));

    f = Mono.Unix.Native.Syscall.fopen(strPath, "r");
    if (f == IntPtr.Zero)
        return null;

    Mono.Unix.Native.Syscall.fclose(f);

    res = System.IO.File.ReadAllText(strPath);
    strPath = null;
    return res;
} // End Function loopfile_from_sysfs


public static string loopdev_get_loopfile(string device)
{
    string res = loopfile_from_sysfs(device);

    if (res == null)
    {
        loop_info lo = new loop_info();
        loop_info64 lo64 = new loop_info64();

        int fd;

        if ((fd = Mono.Unix.Native.Syscall.open(device, Mono.Unix.Native.OpenFlags.O_RDONLY)) < 0)
            return null;

        if (UnsafeNativeMethods.ioctl(fd, LOOP_GET_STATUS64, ref lo64) == 0)
        {
            //lo64.lo_file_name[LO_NAME_SIZE-2] = '*';
            //lo64.lo_file_name[LO_NAME_SIZE-1] = 0;
            //res = strdup((char *) lo64.lo_file_name);
            res = lo64.lo_file_name;
            Console.WriteLine("LOOP_GET_STATUS64");

        }
        else if (UnsafeNativeMethods.ioctl(fd, LOOP_GET_STATUS, ref lo) == 0)
        {
            //lo.lo_name[LO_NAME_SIZE-2] = '*';
            //lo.lo_name[LO_NAME_SIZE-1] = 0;
            //res = strdup((char *) lo.lo_name);
            res = lo.lo_name;
            Console.WriteLine("LOOP_GET_STATUS");
        }

        Mono.Unix.Native.Syscall.close(fd);
    } // End if (res == null)

    return res;
} // End Function loopdev_get_loopfile

And this is the C version:

static char *loopfile_from_sysfs(const char *device)
{
    FILE *f;
    struct stat st;
    char buf[PATH_MAX], *res = NULL;
    // PATH_MAX: 4096

    if (stat(device, &st) || !S_ISBLK(st.st_mode))
        return NULL;

    #define _PATH_SYS_DEVBLOCK "/sys/dev/block"
    snprintf(buf, sizeof(buf), _PATH_SYS_DEVBLOCK "/%d:%d/loop/backing_file",
            major(st.st_rdev), minor(st.st_rdev));

    f = fopen(buf, "r");
    if (!f)
        return NULL;

    if (fgets(buf, sizeof(buf), f)) {
        size_t sz = strlen(buf);
        if (sz) {
            buf[sz - 1] = '\0';
            res = strdup(buf);
        }
    }

    fclose(f);

    printf("loopfile_from_sysfs Result: %s\n", res);
    return res;
}



char *loopdev_get_loopfile(const char *device)
{
    char *res = loopfile_from_sysfs(device);

    if (!res) {
        struct loop_info lo;
        struct loop_info64 lo64;
        int fd;

        if ((fd = open(device, O_RDONLY)) < 0)
            return NULL;

        if (ioctl(fd, LOOP_GET_STATUS64, &lo64) == 0) {
            lo64.lo_file_name[LO_NAME_SIZE-2] = '*';
            lo64.lo_file_name[LO_NAME_SIZE-1] = 0;
            res = strdup((char *) lo64.lo_file_name);
            printf("LOOP_GET_STATUS64\n");

        } else if (ioctl(fd, LOOP_GET_STATUS, &lo) == 0) {
            lo.lo_name[LO_NAME_SIZE-2] = '*';
            lo.lo_name[LO_NAME_SIZE-1] = 0;
            res = strdup((char *) lo.lo_name);
            printf("LOOP_GET_STATUS\n");
        }
        close(fd);
    }
    return res;
}

Answer 2

I think calling:

strace losetup /dev/loop1

and then googling will give you answer.

From what I've seen on my PC, to get status of loopback device ioctl 0x4c05 is called.

Answer 3

From losetup(8) man page

If only the loopdev argument is given, the status of the corresponding loop device is shown.

So you only need to use

$ losetup /dev/loop1
/dev/loop1: [0802]:4751362 (/volumes/jfs.dsk)

If you have a recent kernel (2.6.37 or above), you can also get the target file in /sys/block/loopX/loop/backing_file.

$ cat /sys/block/loop1/loop/backing_file
/volumes/jfs.dsk

If you want to do that problematically (you did not clearly indicate that but you have added the c tag), you should use the LOOP_GET_STATUS or LOOP_GET_STATUS64 ioctl call.