OSDev.org

Is it possible to modify a floppy disk image from linux without calling commands as root?
Right now I use:
losetup /dev/loop0 skeleton.img
sudo mount -t msdos /dev/loop0 /mnt/floppy
sudo cp kernel.bin /mnt/floppy/kernel.bin
sudo umount -d /dev/loop0

Is there a way to do this without doing anything as root?

uglyoldbob wrote:Is it possible to modify a floppy disk image from linux without calling commands as root?
Right now I use:
losetup /dev/loop0 skeleton.img
sudo mount -t msdos /dev/loop0 /mnt/floppy
sudo cp kernel.bin /mnt/floppy/kernel.bin
sudo umount -d /dev/loop0

Is there a way to do this without doing anything as root?

Root access, or being able to su/sudo to the root account (Right group perms) It necessary to be able to write to a device.

Allowing any user to write to a device wouldn't be very sane..

Although the Windows users here wouldn't understand this method of sanity..

That doesn't surprise me as far as security precautions go. I was just wondering if I could achieve the same thing without using mount and still have a floppy disk image with a filesystem on it.

You could try mtools. Your distribution will probably have a package for it.

The commands losetup and mount are non-optional, because you have to link the image file to a device, and you have to mount that.

But you don't have to su / sudo each time!

Add the losetup line to wherever your distro allows you to extend the boot process. (Since you only have to do that once.) For Gentoo Linux, that'd be /etc/conf.d/local.start. /dev/loop0 is now added at boot time.

Then add a line to /etc/fstab:
Now, users (or Makefiles... ) can mount the image file with "mount /mnt/image", and unmount it again, without root being involved anymore.