loop: always allow userspace partitions and optionally support automatic scanning

Automatic partition scanning can be requested individually per loop
device during its setup by setting LO_FLAGS_PARTSCAN. By default, no
partition tables are scanned.

Userspace can now always add and remove partitions from all loop
devices, regardless if the in-kernel partition scanner is enabled or
not.

The needed partition minor numbers are allocated from the extended
minors space, the main loop device numbers will continue to match the
loop minors, regardless of the number of partitions used.

  # grep . /sys/class/block/loop1/loop/*
  /sys/block/loop1/loop/autoclear:0
  /sys/block/loop1/loop/backing_file:/home/kay/data/stuff/part.img
  /sys/block/loop1/loop/offset:0
  /sys/block/loop1/loop/partscan:1
  /sys/block/loop1/loop/sizelimit:0

  # ls -l /dev/loop*
  brw-rw---- 1 root disk   7,   0 Aug 14 20:22 /dev/loop0
  brw-rw---- 1 root disk   7,   1 Aug 14 20:23 /dev/loop1
  brw-rw---- 1 root disk 259,   0 Aug 14 20:23 /dev/loop1p1
  brw-rw---- 1 root disk 259,   1 Aug 14 20:23 /dev/loop1p2
  brw-rw---- 1 root disk   7,  99 Aug 14 20:23 /dev/loop99
  brw-rw---- 1 root disk 259,   2 Aug 14 20:23 /dev/loop99p1
  brw-rw---- 1 root disk 259,   3 Aug 14 20:23 /dev/loop99p2
  crw------T 1 root root  10, 237 Aug 14 20:22 /dev/loop-control

Cc: Karel Zak  <kzak@redhat.com>
Cc: Davidlohr Bueso <dave@gnu.org>
Acked-By: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@vrfy.org>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jaxboe@fusionio.com>

1 files changed, 1 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/include/linux/loop.h b/include/linux/loop.h
index 66c194e2d9b9..4367fc507fe9 100644
--- a/include/linux/loop.h
+++ b/include/linux/loop.h
@@ -76,6 +76,7 @@ enum {
         LO_FLAGS_READ_ONLY      = 1,
         LO_FLAGS_USE_AOPS       = 2,
         LO_FLAGS_AUTOCLEAR      = 4,
+        LO_FLAGS_PARTSCAN       = 8,
 };
 
 #include <asm/posix_types.h>    /* for __kernel_old_dev_t */