[dm-devel] device mapper integrated loops

[David Guyon Martin <david guyonmartin gmail com>]

Hello,

Do you think dm could have a loop target instead of seting loops with losetup ?
We allready have dm-crypt for the encryption stage of a "losetup -e
<crypt>", dm replaces losetup when source is a device but I
understand that we still need losetup if the source is a regular file.
Our problem is that we will need to map a great number of files, as if
they were PVs of a VG. Linux kernel can have up to 255 loops but we
will reach this limit.

The idea is to embed to loop itself in a device mapper add-on like dm-crypt, so we won't use any /dev/loop* .

Do you think this is stupid or is there some possility out there ?
(we would like to have some advice before starting any project in this direction)

Thank you,
David G.M.