Mounting a raw kvm/qemu/... image

I have been doing some kernel hacking recently (mostly uni tasks) and the ability to mount a kvm image turned out very useful. All you need is losetup (and loop device support in kernel of course) and kpartx. On gentoo they are in sys-apps/util-linux and sys-fs/multipath-tools accordingly.

Create a new image:

# kvm-img create -f raw gentoo.raw.img 4G
# losetup -f
/dev/loop/0
# losetup /dev/loop/0 gentoo.raw.img
# cfdisk /dev/loop/0
# kpartx -av /dev/loop/0
add map 0p1 (253:1): 0 8385867 linear /dev/loop0 63
# mkfs /dev/mapper/0p1
# kpartx -dv /dev/loop/0
del devmap : 0p1
# losetup -d /dev/loop/0

Mount an already formatted image:

# kpartx -av gentoo.raw.img
add map loop0p1 (253:1): 0 8385867 linear /dev/loop0 63
# mount /dev/mapper/loop0p1 /mnt/guests/gentoo-kvm

Note that it's dangerous to have the image mounted like that and use it with kvm/qemu/etc at the same time, so here is the reverse process:

# umount /mnt/guests/gentoo-kvm
# kpartx -dv gentoo.raw.img
del devmap : loop0p1
loop deleted : /dev/loop0