Retrieving ext2/3 files from local Rackspace backup images

I needed to retrieve some files from my rackspace backup which I downloaded from the cloud storage (don't ask why T_T). I wanted to just restore on the site but the image was removed from Rackspace as the weekly backup schedule kicked in.

The most common solution I found online was to create a whole virtual machine with the exact OS as the Rackspace's, restore the server, and then retrieve the files. I wanted a quicker way.

To start off,

I am on a Mac, so I downloaded OSXFuse, along with fuse-ext2 from

http://osxfuse.github.com and
http://sourceforge.net/projects/fuse-ext2/?source=dlp

which allows us to meddle around with mounting the filesystems.

Then, I grabbed a copy of vdfuse for mac over at

https://github.com/jonathanxavier/vdfuse

which enables us to mount vhd images.

After which, just run these commands, they should be self explanatory.

mkdir ../vdmount
./vdfuse -a -f image.vhd ../vdmount
cd ../vdmount
sudo fuse-ext2 Partition1 /mnt

..and you are done! You will get to access your files over at /mnt. No need for any time-consuming VM setup. Be sure to unmount with

sudo umount /mnt

afterwards!