-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 08:57:40AM -0500, Phil Susi wrote: > On 11/9/2016 3:26 PM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote: > > On Wed, Nov 09, 2016 at 10:57:23AM -0500, Phil Susi wrote: > >> On 11/9/2016 9:43 AM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote: > >>> unless root has set up fstab accordingly, to name but one variant. > > > >> fstab has nothing to do with it. That only lets you mount and unmount > >> existing filesystems. > > > > It sure has. The sysadmin can set up an fstab entry with the 'user' > > option; she specifies a device (or an UUID, or a label) and a > > mount point. The (regular) user can then mount, wihout any special > > privileges. > > That's what I just said. This discussion isn't about mounting and > unmounting though, but rather is about partitioning.
Sorry. We're going in circles here: mounting: needs privileges (makes sense), partitioning: doesn't need extra privileges (just an operation on a bunch of bytes). > > Unless you know its offset whithin the containing block device, to which > > you do have access (in the mentioned cases of an OS file viz. a device). > > You don't need any loop device for that. You need he loop device for > > *mounting* the file system, not for mkfs. > > Knowing the offset does not help since mkfs does not accept an offset > parameter; it expects the partition device. This is from the mkfs.ext2 man page: -E extended-options Set extended options for the filesystem. Extended options are comma separated, and may take an argument using the equals ('=') sign. The -E option used to be -R in earlier versions of mke2fs. The -R option is still accepted for backwards compatibility, but is deprecated. The following extended options are supported: [...] offset=offset Create the filesystem at an offset from the beginning of the device or file. This can be useful when creating disk images for virtual machines. regards - -- t -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAlgkfjEACgkQBcgs9XrR2kaWqQCfavCQ2UuSEHSUTaZBzFJChdv/ rKUAn3ddyHp6Zga81DD9TYPHUqOr7S73 =cmSY -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----