Mount the specified OS image to the specified directory. This will dissect the image, determine the OS root file system — as well as possibly other partitions — and mount them to the specified directory. If the OS image contains multiple partitions marked with the Discoverable Partitions Specification multiple nested mounts are established. This command expects two arguments: a path to an image file and a path to a directory where to mount the image.

To unmount an OS image mounted like this use the --umount operation.

When the OS image contains LUKS encrypted or Verity integrity protected file systems appropriate volumes are automatically set up and marked for automatic disassembly when the image is unmounted.

The OS image may either be specified as path to an OS image stored in a regular file or may refer to block device node (in the latter case the block device must be the "whole" device, i.e. not a partition device). (The other supported commands described here support this, too.)

All mounted file systems are checked with the appropriate fsck(8) implementation in automatic fixing mode, unless explicitly turned off (--fsck=no) or read-only operation is requested (--read-only).

Note that this functionality is also available in mount(8) via a command such as mount -t ddi myimage.raw targetdir/, as well as in fstab(5). For details, see below.

This is a shortcut for --mount --mkdir.

Unmount an OS image from the specified directory. This command expects one argument: a directory where an OS image was mounted.

All mounted partitions will be recursively unmounted, and the underlying loop device will be removed, along with all its partition sub-devices.

This is a shortcut for --umount --rmdir.

Attach the specified disk image to an automatically allocated loopback block device, and print the path to the loopback block device to standard output. This is similar to an invocation of losetup --find --show, but will validate the image as DDI before attaching, and derive the correct sector size to use automatically. Moreover, it ensures the per-partition block devices are created before returning. Takes a path to a disk image file.

Detach the specified disk image from a loopback block device. This undoes the effect of --attach above. This expects either a path to a loopback block device as an argument, or the path to the backing image file. In the latter case it will automatically determine the right device to detach.

Prints the paths of all the files and directories in the specified OS image or directory to standard output.

Generates a BSD mtree(8) compatible file manifest of the specified disk image or directory. This is useful for comparing image contents in detail, including inode information and other metadata. While the generated manifest will contain detailed inode information, it currently excludes extended attributes, file system capabilities, MAC labels, chattr(1) file flags, btrfs(5) subvolume information, and various other file metadata. File content information is shown via a SHA256 digest. Additional fields might be added in future. Note that inode information such as link counts, inode numbers and timestamps is excluded from the output on purpose, as it typically complicates reproducibility.

Runs the specified command with the specified OS image mounted. This will mount the image to a temporary directory, switch the current working directory to it, and invoke the specified command line as child process. Once the process ends it will unmount the image again, and remove the temporary directory. If no command is specified a shell is invoked. The image is mounted writable, use --read-only to switch to read-only operation. The invoked process will have the $SYSTEMD_DISSECT_ROOT environment variable set, containing the absolute path name of the temporary mount point, i.e. the same directory that is set as the current working directory.

Copies a file or directory from the specified OS image or directory into the specified location on the host file system. Expects three arguments: a path to an image file or directory, a source path (relative to the image's root directory) and a destination path (relative to the current working directory, or an absolute path, both outside of the image). If the destination path is omitted or specified as dash ("-"), the specified file is written to standard output. If the source path in the image file system refers to a regular file it is copied to the destination path. In this case access mode, extended attributes and timestamps are copied as well, but file ownership is not. If the source path in the image refers to a directory, it is copied to the destination path, recursively with all containing files and directories. In this case the file ownership is copied too.

Copies a file or directory from the specified location in the host file system into the specified OS image or directory. Expects three arguments: a path to an image file or directory, a source path (relative to the current working directory, or an absolute path, both outside of the image) and a destination path (relative to the image's root directory). If the source path is omitted or specified as dash ("-"), the data to write is read from standard input. If the source path in the host file system refers to a regular file, it is copied to the destination path. In this case access mode, extended attributes and timestamps are copied as well, but file ownership is not. If the source path in the host file system refers to a directory it is copied to the destination path, recursively with all containing files and directories. In this case the file ownership is copied too.

As with --mount file system checks are implicitly run before the copy operation begins.

Show a list of DDIs in well-known directories. This will show machine, portable service and system/configuration extension disk images in the usual directories /usr/lib/machines/, /usr/lib/portables/, /usr/lib/confexts/, /var/lib/machines/, /var/lib/portables/, /var/lib/extensions/ and so on.

Validates the partition arrangement of a disk image (DDI), and ensures it matches the image policy specified via --image-policy=, if one is specified. This parses the partition table and probes the file systems in the image, but does not attempt to mount them (nor to set up disk encryption/authentication via LUKS/Verity). It does this taking the configured image dissection policy into account. Since this operation does not mount file systems, this command – unlike all other commands implemented by this tool – requires no privileges other than the ability to access the specified file. Prints "OK" and returns zero if the image appears to be in order and matches the specified image dissection policy. Otherwise prints an error message and returns non-zero.

Print a short help text and exit.

Print a short version string and exit.

Operate in read-only mode. By default --mount will establish writable mount points. If this option is specified they are established in read-only mode instead.

Turn off automatic file system checking. By default when an image is accessed for writing (by --mount or --copy-to) the file systems contained in the OS image are automatically checked using the appropriate fsck(8) command, in automatic fixing mode. This behavior may be switched off using --fsck=no.

Turn off automatic growing of accessed file systems to their partition size, if marked for that in the GPT partition table. By default when an image is accessed for writing (by --mount or --copy-to) the file systems contained in the OS image are automatically grown to their partition sizes, if bit 59 in the GPT partition flags is set for partition types that are defined by the Discoverable Partitions Specification. This behavior may be switched off using --growfs=no. File systems are grown automatically on access if all of the following conditions are met:

If combined with --mount the directory to mount the OS image to is created if it is missing. Note that the directory is not automatically removed when the disk image is unmounted again.

If combined with --umount the specified directory where the OS image is mounted is removed after unmounting the OS image.

Takes one of "disabled", "loop", "all", "crypto". If "disabled" the image is accessed with empty block discarding turned off. If "loop" discarding is enabled if operating on a regular file. If "crypt" discarding is enabled even on encrypted file systems. If "all" discarding is unconditionally enabled.

If specified an in-memory copy of the specified disk image is used. This may be used to operate with write-access on a (possibly read-only) image, without actually modifying the original file. This may also be used in order to operate on a disk image without keeping the originating file system busy, in order to allow it to be unmounted.

Configure various aspects of Verity data integrity for the OS image. Option --root-hash= specifies a hex-encoded top-level Verity hash to use for setting up the Verity integrity protection. Option --root-hash-sig= specifies the path to a file containing a PKCS#7 signature for the hash. This signature is passed to the kernel during activation, which will match it against signature keys available in the kernel keyring. Option --verity-data= specifies a path to a file with the Verity data to use for the OS image, in case it is stored in a detached file. It is recommended to embed the Verity data directly in the image, using the Verity mechanisms in the Discoverable Partitions Specification.

Configures the "reference" string the kernel shall report as backing file for the loopback block device. While this is supposed to be a path or filename referencing the backing file, this is not enforced and the kernel accepts arbitrary free-form strings, chosen by the user. Accepts arbitrary strings up to a length of 63 characters. This sets the kernel's ".lo_file_name" field for the block device. Note this is distinct from the /sys/class/block/loopX/loop/backing_file attribute file that always reports a path referring to the actual backing file. The latter is subject to mount namespace translation, the former is not.

If combined with --mtree, turns off inclusion of file hashes in the mtree output. This makes the --mtree faster when operating on large images.

Takes an image policy string as argument, as per systemd.image-policy(7). The policy is enforced when operating on the disk image specified via --image=, see above. If not specified defaults to the "*" policy, i.e. all recognized file systems in the image are used.

Do not pipe output into a pager.

Do not print the legend, i.e. column headers and the footer with hints.

Shows output formatted as JSON. Expects one of "short" (for the shortest possible output without any redundant whitespace or line breaks), "pretty" (for a pretty version of the same, with indentation and line breaks) or "off" (to turn off JSON output, the default).