Loop device

In Unix-like operating systems, a loop device, vnd (vnode disk), or lofi (loop file interface) is a pseudo-device that makes a file accessible as a block device.

Before use, a loop device must be connected to an existing file in the filesystem. The association provides the user with an API that allows the file to be used in place of a block special file (cf. device file system). Thus, if the file contains an entire file system, the file may then be mounted as if it were a disk device.

Files of this kind are often used for CD ISO images and floppy disc images. Mounting a file containing a filesystem via such a loop mount makes the files within that filesystem accessible. They appear in the mount point directory.

A loop device may allow some kind of data elaboration during this redirection. For example, the device may be the unencrypted version of an encrypted file. In such a case, the file associated with a loop device may be another pseudo-device. This is mostly useful when this device contains an encrypted file system. If supported, the loop device is in this case the decrypted version of the original encrypted file and can therefore be mounted as if it were a normal filesystem.

Lofoi

Lofoi (Greek: Λόφοι) is a village in the Florina peripheral unit, Greece, located 15 km east of the city of Florina. Its name in Macedonian Slavic is Заб'рдени (Zab'rdeni). It was also known as Ζαπύρδανη (Zapyrdani) or Ζαμπύρδανη (Zampyrdani) in Greek, until it was renamed by Greek authorities in 1926.

History

First mentioned in an Ottoman defter of 1481, the village, then known as Zabrdani, had eighty households and produced vines, walnuts, and honey. In Ottoman tax registers of the non-Muslim population of the wilayah Filorine from 1626–1627, the village is marked under the name Zaburdani with 62 households.

The population of the village was affiliated with the Bulgarian Exarchate church in the early 20th century. According to Dimitar Mishev, the secretary of the Exarchate, there were 344 Bulgarians in Zabrdani in 1905 and there was a Bulgarian school that functioned in the village.

The village was incorporated into Greece in 1913 after the Balkan Wars.

Demography

According to the 2001 census, the population of Lofi is 443 people. The population is largely from a Macedonian Slavic-speaking background.