The software described in this documentation is either in Extended Support or Sustaining Support. See https://www.oracle.com/us/support/library/enterprise-linux-support-policies-069172.pdf for more information.
Oracle recommends that you upgrade the software described by this documentation as soon as possible.

18.1.3 Mapping Partition Tables to Devices

You can use the kpartx utility to map the partitions of any block device or file that contains a partition table and partition images. kpartx reads the partition table and creates device files for the partitions in /dev/mapper. Each device file represents a disk volume or a disk partition on a device or within an image file.

The -l option lists any partitions that it finds, for example in an installation image file:

# kpartx -l system.img
loop0p1 : 0 204800 /dev/loop0 2048
loop0p2 : 0 12288000 /dev/loop0 206848
loop0p3 : 0 4096000 /dev/loop0 212494848
loop0p4 : 0 2 /dev/loop0 16590848

This output shows that the drive image contains four partitions, and the first column are the names of the device files that can be created in /dev/mapper.

The -a option creates the device mappings:

# kpartx -a system.img
# ls /dev/mapper
control  loop0p1  loop0p2  loop0p3  loop0p4

If a partition contains a file system, you can mount it and view the files that it contains, for example:

# mkdir /mnt/sysimage
# mount /dev/mapper/loop0p1 /mnt/sysimage
# ls /mnt/sysimage
config-2.6.32-220.el6.x86_64
config-2.6.32-300.3.1.el6uek.x86_64
efi
grub
initramfs-2.6.32-220.el6.x86_64.img
initramfs-2.6.32-300.3.1.el6uek.x86_64.img
...
# umount /mnt/sysimage

The -d option removes the device mappings:

# kpartx -d system.img
# ls /dev/mapper
control

For more information, see the kpartx(8) manual page.