How to Mount raw VM disk images (KVM/Xen/VMW)

You can use linux loop device to mount the raw/disk images on the host. First, setup the loop device with the image file:

losetup /dev/loop0 raw-image-file.raw

Once done, use kpartx to recognise and activate partitions in the image:

kpartx -a /dev/loop0

Once done, you can see the partitions available to this image under /dev/mapper/loop0*

# ls /dev/mapper/loop0*
/dev/mapper/loop0p1 /dev/mapper/loop0p2 /dev/mapper/loop0p3 /dev/mapper/loop0p4 /dev/mapper/loop0p5 /dev/mapper/loop0p6

Now, you can mount each partition to a mount point, for example:

mount /dev/mapper/loop0p1 /mnt

Once all the processing is done, unmount the partitions, deactivate partitions with kpartx and remove the loop device:

umount /mnt
kpartx -d /dev/loop0
losetup -d /dev/loop0