XMOUNT README FILE

Table of contents
  0.0 Author and license stuff
  1.0 What is xmount? - A short description
  2.0 A deeper view of things
    2.1 Emulated DD file
    2.2 Emulated DMG file
    2.3 Emulated VDI file
    2.4 Emulated VMDK file
    2.5 Emulated VHD file
    2.6 Virtual write access
  3.0 Installation instructions
    3.1 Prerequisits
    3.1 Install from a package
    3.2 Install from source
  4.0 xmount command line parameters
    4.1 xmount usage examples

0.0 Author and license stuff
  xmount Copyright (c) 2008-2014 by Gillen Daniel <gillen.dan@pinguin.lu>

  This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
  the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
  Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later
  version.

  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
  ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS
  FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
  this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

  ---

  Due to AFFLIB, I have to mention that:

  This product includes software developed by Simson L. Garfinkel and Basis
  Technology Corp.

1.0 What is xmount? - A short description
  xmount allows you to convert on-the-fly between multiple input and output
  harddisk image formats. xmount creates a virtual file system using FUSE
  (Filesystem in Userspace) that contains a virtual representation of the input
  image.

  The virtual representation can be in raw DD, Apple's Disk Image format (DMG),
  VirtualBox's virtual disk file format (VDI), Microsoft's Virtual Hard Disk
  Image format (VHD) or in VmWare's VMDK file format.

  Input images can be raw DD, EWF (Expert Witness Compression Format) or AFF
  (Advanced Forensic Format) files.

  In addition, xmount also supports virtual write access to the output files
  that is redirected to a cache file. This makes it possible to boot acquired
  harddisk images using QEMU, KVM, VirtualBox, VmWare or alike.

2.0 A deeper view of things
  2.1 Emulated DD file
    This is the standard data representation used by xmount. It is a file
    containing the raw data contained in the input image file. Except for OSx
    (see 2.2) this is the default output format when no --out option is
    specified.

  2.2 Emulated DMG file
    This is also a file containing the raw data contained in the input image
    file but with a .dmg file extension. On OSx, this is the default output
    format when no --out option is specified.

  2.3 Emulated VDI file
    When using the "--out vdi" command line parameter, a VirtualBox disk file
    is emulated. This means that xmount builds a virtual VDI header and prepends
    it to the raw data contained in the input image. The VDI file can be used in
    VirtualBox as a virtual disk file.

  2.4 Emulated VMDK file
    When using the "--out vmdk(s)" command line paramter, a VMWare virtual disk
    file will be emulated. This mainly consists in building a VMDK descriptor
    file that will access an emulated DD file. You can use this VMDK file to
    add your input image as virtual disk to a VMWare virtual machine. "vmdk" is
    a VMWare disk attached to the IDE bus and "vmdks" is attached to the SCSI
    bus.

    When emulating VMDK files to be used in VMWare, you have to enable
    "user_allow_other" in /etc/fuse.conf or run xmount and VmWare as root.

    WARNING: VMDK support should be considered experimental and currently the
             VMDK descriptor file isn't cached.

  2.5 Emulated VHD file
    When using the "--out vhd" command line parameter, a Virtual Hard Disk Image
    file is emulated by appending to the raw data a valid VHD footer. Valid here
    means as described in Microsoft's Virtual Hard Disk Image Format specs v1.

  2.6 Virtual write access
    By using the "--cache <cache_file>" command line parameter, xmount allows
    you to change data in the emulated image files. All changes are written to a
    separate cache file. No data will ever be written to the original input
    image files! Write access is limited to change existing data. It isn't
    possible to change the emulated image's file size (no append or truncate)!
    The same cache file can be used with different output image formats without
    loosing changed data.

3.0 Installation instructions
  To install xmount, you can use a prebuild package for your distribution or
  you can build xmount from source. The two methods are described in the
  following sections.

  3.1 Prerequisits
    SYSTEM:
      - Linux: Some sort of Linux with a recent kernel (2.6.x or above).
      - OSx: OSx 10.6 or above

    FUSE:
      Your os must support FUSE and have the appropriate libraries installed.
      (See http://fuse.sourceforge.net/ for more informations). To be able to
      install from source, you also need the FUSE header files. On OSx, you can
      use osxfuse instead.

    LIBEWF:
      To enable EWF input image support. Get it from
      http://sourceforge.net/projects/libewf/

    LIBAFF:
      To enable AFF input image support. Get it from http://www.afflib.org/

  3.2 Install from a package
    Chances are I provide prebuild binary packages for Debian / Ubuntu. In this
    case, you only have to fire up your distribution's package manager and
    install xmount. See https://www.pinguin.lu/xmount for more information and
    download links.

  3.3 Install from source
    After having checked the prerequisits, you should be able to compile and
    install xmount by simply issuing the following commands:

    $ mkdir build
    $ cd build
    $ cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
    $ make
    $ sudo make install

4.0 xmount command line parameters
  xmount [[fopts] [mopts]] <ifile> [<ifile> [...]] <mntp>

  fopts:
    -d : Enable FUSE's and xmount's debug mode.
    -s : Run single threaded.
    -o no_allow_other : Disable automatic addition of FUSE's allow_other option.
    -o <fmopts> : Specify fuse mount options. Will also disable automatic
                  addition of FUSE's allow_other option!

  mopts:
    --cache <file> : Enable virtual write support and set cachefile to use.
    --in <itype> : Input image format. <itype> can be "dd", "ewf".
    --inopts <iopts> : Specify input library specific options.
    --info : Print out some infos about used compiler and libraries.
    --offset <off> : Move the output image data start <off> bytes into the input
                     image.
    --out <otype> : Output image format.
                    <otype> can be "dd", "dmg", "vdi", "vhd", "vmdk(s)".
    --owcache <file> : Same as --cache <file> but overwrites existing cache.
    --rw <file> : Same as --cache <file>. Deprecated!
    --version : Same as --info.
    INFO: Input and output image type defaults to "dd" if not specified.

  ifile:
    Input image file. If your input image is split into multiple files, you have
    to specify them all!

  mntp:
    Mount point where virtual files should be located.

  iopts:
    Some input libraries might support an own set of options to configure / tune
    their behaviour. If so, their options can be specified here as comma
    sepearated list of key=value pairs.

  4.1 xmount usage examples
    To xmount an EWF harddisk image from your acquired disk as a raw DD image
    under /mnt, use the following command:

      xmount --in ewf ./acquired_disk.E?? /mnt

    To xmount the same ewf image as vdi file, you would use a command like this:

      xmount --in ewf --out vdi ./acquired_disk.E?? /mnt

    And to enable virtual write support on a raw DD input image xmounted as VDI
    file:

      xmount --out vdi --cache ./acquired_disk.cache ./acquired_disk.dd /mnt