[TriLUG] /dev/loop*

[Jeremy P]

On Tue, 12 Feb 2002, Chris Hedemark wrote:

> Howdy,
> 
> 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.
> 
> Has anyone else here run into this problem?

The default maximum is set in {kernel-source}/drivers/block/loop.c
You can change that and recompile your kernel, or apparently you can pass
the parameter max_loop to the module to change this at module insertion.

--Jeremy