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.