KPARTX(8)

🎀 KPARTX(8) — the kpartx manual 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

okay so kpartx is the tool that turns partitions into device maps 💅 It creates device maps from partition tables.

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

kpartx [-a|-d|-u|-l] [-r] [-p] [-f] [-g] [-s|-n] [-v] wholedisk

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

bestie, this one is lowkey iconic. It's derived from util-linux' partx 🦋 It reads the partition tables on the device you give it and creates device maps over the partition segments it finds. Hotplug calls it when device maps get created and deleted, so you don't have to do that part yourself ✨

👑 OPTIONS 👑

• -a — add partition mappings 🫶
• -d — delete partition mappings 💀
• -u — update partition mappings 🔥
• -l — list the partition mappings that would be added by -a 👀
• -r — make the partition mappings read-only 🙈
• -p — set the delimiter between the device name and the partition number 🧚
• -f — force the creation of mappings, even if it overrides the no_partitions feature 😭
• -g — force a GUID partition table (GPT) 💜
• -s — sync mode, which is the default ✨ it won't return until the partitions are created, so no cap, you can rely on it being done
• -n — nosync mode 🌈 it returns before the partitions are created
• -v — operate verbosely 📣

🧚 EXAMPLE 🧚

okay so say you want to mount all the partitions in a raw disk image 🥹 you'd run:

kpartx -av disk.img

and it'll print lines that look like this:

add map loop1p1 (254:4): 0 409597 linear 7:1 3

the loop1p1 bit is the name of a device file under /dev/mapper, and that's what you use to get at the partition. for example, to fsck it:

fsck /dev/mapper/loop1p1

when you're finished, you need to remove the devices too, so run:

kpartx -d disk.img

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

multipath(8) multipathd(8) hotplug(8)

💅 AUTHORS 💅

this man page was assembled By Patrick Caulfield for the Debian project 🍓

multipath-tools was developed by Christophe Varoqui <christophe.varoqui@opensvc.com> and others 🫶

that's the whole tea, bestie 🌈✨ this page is from the Linux manual, dated 2019-04-27, and it's all about KPARTX(8) 💖 love you, mwah 😘🎀