How to do it...

Perform the following steps outlined to partition and create a filesystem on the blank image:

1. Load the nbd kernel module:

    root@kvm:~# modprobe nbd
    root@kvm:~#

1. Using the qemu-nbd tool, associate the blank image file to the /dev/nbd0 block device: 

root@kvm:~# qemu-nbd --format=raw --connect=/dev/nbd0          debian.img  
root@kvm:~#

1. Create two partitions on the block device. One will be used for swap, and the other as the root partition for the guest OS:   

root@kvm:~# sfdisk /dev/nbd0 << EOF    
>,1024,82    
>;    
>EOF    
Checking that no-one is using this disk right now ...
OK
Disk /dev/nbd0: cannot get geometry

Disk /dev/nbd0: 1305 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track

sfdisk: ERROR: sector 0 does not have an msdos signature
 /dev/nbd0: unrecognized partition table type
Old situation:
No partitions found
New situation:
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

 Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/nbd0p1 0+ 1023 1024- 8225279+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/nbd0p2 1024 1304 281 2257132+ 83 Linux
/dev/nbd0p3 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/nbd0p4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
Warning: no primary partition is marked bootable (active)
This does not matter for LILO, but the DOS MBR will not boot this disk.
Successfully wrote the new partition table

Re-reading the partition table ...

If you created or changed a DOS partition, /dev/foo7, say, then use dd(1)
to zero the first 512 bytes: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/foo7 bs=512 count=1
(See fdisk(8).)
root@kvm:~#

1.  List the available block devices after the partitioning:

root@kvm:~# ls -la /dev/nbd0*    
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 43, 0 Feb 10 18:24 /dev/nbd0    
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 43, 1 Feb 10 18:24 /dev/nbd0p1    
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 43, 2 Feb 10 18:24 /dev/nbd0p2    
root@kvm:~#

1. Create the swap partition: 

root@kvm:~# mkswap /dev/nbd0p1    
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 508 KiB (520192 bytes)    
no label, UUID=c246fe39-1bc5-4978-967c-806264771d69    
root@kvm:~#

1. Make the EXT4 filesystem on the root partition:   

root@kvm:~# mkfs.ext4 /dev/nbd0p2    
mke2fs 1.42.13 (17-May-2015)    
Discarding device blocks: failed - Input/output error    
Creating filesystem with 2620928 4k blocks and 655360 inodes    
Filesystem UUID: 2ffa23de-579a-45ad-abbc-2a179de67f11    
Superblock backups stored on blocks:    
    32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632    
Allocating group tables: done    
Writing inode tables: done    
Creating journal (32768 blocks): done    
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done    
root@kvm:~#