Loop devices, version 1
=======================

Loop devices can be used to mount regular files, to put more than one
file system on a disk partition and to provide transparent data
encryption.

Note: This implementation differs from my old loop devices that are
      also found in some distributions of SLS.

All this code is covered by the General Public License.


Installation
------------

Create the device entries in /dev:

  for n in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7; do mknod /dev/loop$n b 12 $n; done

Apply the patch to your 0.99pl11 kernel source:

  cd /usr/src/linux
  patch -s -p1 <lo.patch

If you want to use DES encryption, download the DES module and add it:

  cd /usr/src/linux
  gunzip <des.tar.gz | tar xvf -
  touch include/linux/des.h kernel/des.c

Rebuild the kernel:

  make depend
  make zlilo		# or something like that


Migration
---------

Version 1 of the loop devices uses a slightly different wrapper
algorithm for DES than version 0. In the unlikely event that you
have some old ecrypted files, you have to convert them with the
(untested) utility cvdes before they can be used with version 1.
(See the man page for details.)


Usage
-----

Is documented in the accompanying losetup man page.


Authors
-------

Original author: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@athena.mit.edu>
Maintainer: Werner Almesberger <almesber@bernina.ethz.ch>
DES author: Eric Young <eay@psych.psy.uq.oz.au>