Peek into .img files

[Deastrom]

Is there a way to browse the contents of a .img file in such a way that you’re able to view the contents of the original partition that the .img file represents? This would be similar to the Ghost software that allows you to browse a .gho image of a drive.

[Tom Elliott]

Technically it is possible using the partclone-utils stuff, but you do have decompress the img file first.

[Wayne Workman]

You might need NTFS support…

I wouldn’t recommend fiddling with this on your production FOG server… maybe use a Linux Live CD on a desktop, and copy over your image via NFS and do it on the Live CD ?

[ch3i]

@Tom-Elliott said:

Technically it is possible using the partclone-utils stuff, but you do have decompress the img file first.

With a script to uncompress/mount and a php folder browser

[cml]

It seems like it would be easier to just restore the image to a client, but I had to find a way.

All of this is done on Debian 7 and like Wayne I would not advise you doing this on your production server.

Breakdown:
Install ntfs-3g, partclone, and pigz
Decompress image and restore to a file
Mount image

apt-get install ntfs-3g partclone pigz
cd /images/SecurityE420s/
cat d1p2.img | pigz -d -c | partclone.restore -C -s - -O d1p3.img
mount -t ntfs-3g d1p3.img /mnt

ls -lah /mnt
total 6.9G
drwxrwxrwx  1 root root 4.0K Aug 27  2014 .
drwxr-xr-x 28 root root 4.0K Jun 18 17:15 ..
lrwxrwxrwx  2 root root   60 Jul 14  2009 Documents and Settings -> /mnt/Users
-rwxrwxrwx  1 root root 9.5K Aug 28  2014 fog.log
-rwxrwxrwx  1 root root 3.0G Aug 28  2014 hiberfil.sys
drwxrwxrwx  1 root root    0 Aug 27  2014 Intel
drwxrwxrwx  1 root root    0 Jun 11  2014 MSOCache
-rwxrwxrwx  1 root root 4.0G Aug 28  2014 pagefile.sys
drwxrwxrwx  1 root root    0 Jul 13  2009 PerfLogs
drwxrwxrwx  1 root root 4.0K Aug 28  2014 ProgramData
drwxrwxrwx  1 root root 8.0K Aug 27  2014 Program Files
drwxrwxrwx  1 root root 8.0K Aug 27  2014 Program Files (x86)
-rwxrwxrwx  1 root root 3.1K Aug 28  2014 QcOSD.txt
drwxrwxrwx  1 root root    0 Aug 26  2014 $Recycle.Bin
drwxrwxrwx  1 root root 4.0K Jun 11  2014 System Volume Information
drwxrwxrwx  1 root root 4.0K Nov 20  2010 Users
drwxrwxrwx  1 root root  40K Aug 28  2014 Windows

[Deastrom]

Neat, I’ll have to give this a shot. Thank you guys.