If you have NBD support enabled in your kernel, you can use this to read a file over HTTP as a block device. The most obvious use for me was (is) to mount ISO images without having to download them entirely. If your linux distribution installer allows early console access, you should be able to even install the OS from a CD ISO over HTTP. Sources are available [1]here. To use it, compile (you need kernel headers and pthreads installed), load the kernel module and run nbd-http: make modprobe nbd ./nbd-http /dev/nbd0 http://mirror.org/file.iso (and in another console:) mount /dev/nbd0 /mnt/cdrom Due to the nbd driver using the userland process to make block requests, there is apparently no other way to stop the nbd userland helper other than ``killlal -9 nbd-http''. Feedback is welcome at reverse(moc.liamg@cojrah) - Harjoc Bogdan. References 1. https://patraulea.com/nbd-http/src/