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 vdi file
    2.3 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) 2008,2009 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/>.

1.0 What is xmount? - A short description
  xmount allows you to convert on-the-fly between multiple input and output
  image types. 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 or in VirtualBox's virtual disk file
  format. Input images can be raw DD or EWF (Expert Witness Compression Format)
  files. In addition, xmount also supports virtual write access to the output
  files that is redirected to a cache file. This makes it for example possible
  to use VirtualBox to boot an os contained in a read-only EWF image.

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.

  2.2 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. This makes it possible to access data
    from image files in a virtual machine.

  2.3 Virtual write access
    By using the "--rw <cache_file>" command line parameter, xmount allows you
    to write data to the emulated image files. All changes are written to a
    separate cache file. No data will ever be written to the input image files.
    Write access is limited to change existing data only. It isn't possible to
    change the emulated image's file size! (No append or truncate)

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
    FUSE:
      Your linux distribution must support FUSE and have the apropiate libraries
      installed. (See http://fuse.sourceforge.net/ for more informations). To be
      able to install from source, you also need the FUSE header files.
    LIBEWF: (If you want to have EWF input image support)
      You must have installed libewf. To install from source, you also need the
      appropriate header files. (See https://www.uitwisselplatform.nl/projects/
      libewf/ for more informations)

  3.2 Install from a package
    Chances are I provide prebuild binary packages for OpenBSD (No EWF and AFF
    support), Slackware, Debian and Ubuntu. In this case, you only have to fire
    up your distribution's package manager and install xmount. See
    http://www.pinguin.lu for more informations 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 followng three commands:

    # ./configure
    # make
    # make install

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

  fopts:
    -d : Enable FUSE's debug mode. (Enables also xmount's debug mode)
    -s : Run single threaded.
  mopts:
    --rw <cache_file> : Enable virtual write support and set cache file to use.
    --in <type> : Specify input image type. Type can be "dd", "ewf".
    --out <type> : Specify output image type. Type can be "dd" or "vdi".
    Input and output image type defaults to "dd" if not specified.
  ifile:
    Input image file. If you use EWF files, you have to specify all image
    segments!
  mntp:
    Mount point where virtual files should be located.

  4.1 xmount usage examples
    To xmount an EWF 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 \-\-output vdi ./acquired_disk.E?? /mnt

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

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