Creating A Browse-able Virtual File Archive in Linux

In Linux, there are many ways to create a virtual file archive. A virtual file archive is a storage file which imitates an inode storage device, meaning it's like what a physical drive can do but contained in a single archive. So how do we create this virtual file archive? What we will be using is the most primitive way to create a virtual file archive using Linux built in tool set.

The secret to happiness is freedom…​ And the secret to freedom is courage. — Thucydides.

Prerequisites

The tooling that we will be using is already built in Linux. To be transparent what I’m currently using is Arch Linux.

• dd
• losetup
• mount

So, what do we do now?

Create the file that will be used as file archive.

dd if=/dev/zero of=gem.bin bs=1024 count=0 seek=1G

Setup a loop block device to handle input/output (emulating physical drives).

losetup /dev/loop0 gem.bin

Create the mountable directory.

mkdir -p /mnt/vfa

Mount the loop block device to the mountable directory.

mount -t ext3 /dev/loop0 /mnt/vfa

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Fun Fact

1. losetup is used to associate loop devices with regular files or block devices, to detach loop devices and to query the status of a loop device. If only the loopdev argument is given, the status of the corresponding loop device is shown.
2. dd is a command-line utility for Unix and Unix-like operating systems, the primary purpose of which is to convert and copy files.
3. mount command serves to attach the filesystem found on some device to the big file tree.