I don't understand how the rootfs file was created. I would like to know. was it a dummy file that was created then formated to standard. also how would you mount this file as a drive?
to read back files, i.e. mount it
mkdir /mnt/loopback
mount -o loop /location/to/rootfs /mnt/loopback
donno what but after you mount it you can format the filesystem after the previous commands