From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:44141) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fQZDU-0007Dp-M3 for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 06 Jun 2018 10:15:18 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fQZDT-0002co-TA for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 06 Jun 2018 10:15:12 -0400 Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2018 11:14:32 -0300 From: Eduardo Habkost Message-ID: <20180606141432.GS7451@localhost.localdomain> References: <20180606123237.2235ae4a@kitsune.suse.cz> <20180606131929.44d0fd6b@kitsune.suse.cz> <93233bff-604b-c891-90ce-64fe1eaaaab5@redhat.com> <20180606134327.05de9616@kitsune.suse.cz> <94cea1d9-d934-85d1-66d4-dbfc82b8dd53@redhat.com> <20180606141356.0b86d6b4@kitsune.suse.cz> <95f92a95-6592-27a2-a822-d3a047cf8339@redhat.com> <20180606154510.24be6ceb@kitsune.suse.cz> <20180606135010.GF3064@redhat.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20180606135010.GF3064@redhat.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] storing machine data in qcow images? List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: Daniel =?iso-8859-1?Q?P=2E_Berrang=E9?= Cc: Michal =?iso-8859-1?Q?Such=E1nek?= , Max Reitz , Kevin Wolf , qemu-block@nongnu.org, "Michael S. Tsirkin" , "Richard W.M. Jones" , qemu-devel@nongnu.org, stefanha@redhat.com On Wed, Jun 06, 2018 at 02:50:10PM +0100, Daniel P. Berrang=E9 wrote: > On Wed, Jun 06, 2018 at 03:45:10PM +0200, Michal Such=E1nek wrote: > >=20 > > I think that *if* we want an 'appliance' format that stores a whole V= M > > in a single file to ease VM distribution then the logical place to lo= ok > > in qemu is qcow. The reason have been explained at length. >=20 > I rather disagree. This is a common problem beyond just QEMU and everyo= ne > just uses an existing archive format (TAR, ZIP) for bundling together > one or more disk images, metdata for config, and whatever other resourc= es > are applicable for the vendor. This works with any disk format (raw, > qcow2, vmdk, vpc, etc) so is preferrable to inventing someting that is > specific to qcow2 IMHO. Now we have N+1 appliance file formats. :) (We like it or not, qcow2 is already used as an appliance format for single-disk VMs in practice.) But I agree this must not be specific to qcow2. The same VM description format we agree upon should work with other disk formats or with multi-disk appliances. If we specify a reasonable VM description format for appliances and make it work inside (e.g.) tar files, we will still have the option of allowing the description be placed inside qcow2 if we really want to. I don't think we need to finish this qcow2 bikeshedding exercise right now. --=20 Eduardo