How to mount one partition from an image file that contains multiple partitions on Linux?

You might do it like this, without much hassle:

# kpartx -v -a logging-test.img add map loop0p1 (251:0): 0 497664 linear /dev/loop0 2048add map loop0p2 (251:1): 0 66605058 linear /dev/loop0 501758add map loop0p5 (251:2): 0 66605056 251:1 2# ls /dev/mapper/control  loop0p1  loop0p2  loop0p5# mount /dev/mapper/loop0p1 /mnt/test# mount  | grep test/dev/mapper/loop0p1 on /mnt/test type ext2 (rw)#

And to remove the loop device after you finished:

# kpartx -v -d logging-test.imgdel devmap : loop0p2del devmap : loop0p1loop deleted : /dev/loop0#

If you have util-linux v2.21 or higher, you can now do this with losetup. Use the -P (--partscan) option to read the partition table and create device nodes for each partition:

# losetup --show -f -P test.img/dev/loop0# ls /dev/loop0*/dev/loop0/dev/loop0p1/dev/loop0p2# mount /dev/loop0p1 /mnt/tmp

Let's say $IMAGE is set to the path to your image file.You could write a small script by using

fdisk -u sectors -l $IMAGE

to get a list of partitions inside the image. And then use a sequence of

mount -o ro,loop,offset=$OFFSET -t auto $IMAGE /media/$DEST

Where offset is calculated means the info from fdisk (start sector * size of a sector in bytes) and $DEST a unique name for each of the partitions.

That's not directly the solution but I hope a pretty good indication on how to realize it. If you make the job once, you've some small nice beginning for some forensic toolkit!​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​