Used to manage loop devices, these are volumes contained in a file and not in a drive or partition eg. iso image file
package util-linux
To create an empty container file
WARNING ! dd can overwrite your entire drive if you use the wrong Output File (of)
You can use if=/dev/random for more security but it takes longer
Make the container file available for mounting as the next available loop device number
You can use the Disk Utility or cryptsetup on a loop device that has been setup
WARNING ! dd can overwrite your entire drive if you use the wrong Output File (of)
You can make an iso image of a cdrom by using if=/dev/cdrom or if=/dev/sd0
After you have unmounted the volume
Since Linux version 2.6.25 auto-destruction of loop devices are supported, any loop device allocated by mount will be freed by umount independently on /etc/mtab
Otherwise you can manually free a loop device