Loop devices
============

Increasing the number of loop devices
-------------------------------------
If you see "mount: could not find any free loop device" you have
to increase the number of loop devices by adding the following
to /etc/modprobe.conf on a 2.6 kernel (or /etc/modules.conf on
a 2.4 kernel).

----
options loop max_loop=64
----

To make this active, unmount all loop-mounts and then remove the loop
module from the kernel:

----
rmmod loop
----

Or alternatively, reboot your system :)


Verify the maximum number of loop devices
-----------------------------------------
You can verify the new maximum number of loop devices by doing:

	dmesg | grep loop:

You should see something similar to:

	Aug  9 16:36:20 emyn kernel: loop: loaded (max 256 devices)


Creating extra loop device entries
----------------------------------
Also make sure you have enough devices available. You can
check how many you have by doing:

	ls -d /dev/loop*

An easy way to create more, is by doing:

	for i in $(seq 0 255); do
		mknod -m0660 /dev/loop$i b 7 $i
		chown root.disk /dev/loop$i
	done

You can have up to 256 loop devices mounted.

PS Unfortunately SLES9 has compiled the loop module inside the kernel,
therefor you have to add 'max_loop=64' to the kernel parameters directly
and you require a reboot.

---
Please send me improvements to this document.