diff --git a/qemu-deprecated.texi b/qemu-deprecated.texi
index 9cc20b365c..8a6174df0c 100644
--- a/qemu-deprecated.texi
+++ b/qemu-deprecated.texi
@@ -160,3 +160,36 @@ Example of legacy encoding:
 The above, converted to the current supported format:
 
 @code{json:@{"file.driver":"rbd", "file.pool":"rbd", "file.image":"name"@}}
+
+@section Related binaries
+
+@subsection qemu-nbd --partition (since 4.0.0)
+
+The ``qemu-nbd --partition $digit'' code (also spelled @option{-P})
+can only handle MBR partitions, and has never correctly handled
+logical partitions beyond partition 5.  If you know the offset and
+length of the partition (perhaps by using @code{sfdisk} within the
+guest), you can achieve the effect of exporting just that subset of
+the disk by use of the @option{--image-opts} option with a raw
+blockdev using the @code{offset} and @code{size} parameters layered on
+top of any other existing blockdev. For example, if partition 1 is
+100MiB long starting at 1MiB, the old command:
+
+@code{qemu-nbd -t -P 1 -f qcow2 file.qcow2}
+
+can be rewritten as:
+
+@code{qemu-nbd -t --image-opts driver=raw,offset=1M,size=100M,file.driver=qcow2,file.backing.driver=file,file.backing.filename=file.qcow2}
+
+Alternatively, the @code{nbdkit} project provides a more powerful
+partition filter on top of its nbd plugin, which can be used to select
+an arbitrary MBR or GPT partition on top of any other full-image NBD
+export.  Using this to rewrite the above example results in:
+
+@code{qemu-nbd -t -k /tmp/sock -f qcow2 file.qcow2 &}
+@code{nbdkit -f --filter=partition nbd socket=/tmp/sock partition=1}
+
+Note that if you are exposing the export via /dev/nbd0, it is easier
+to just export the entire image and then mount only /dev/nbd0p1 than
+it is to reinvoke @command{qemu-nbd -c /dev/nbd0} limited to just a
+subset of the image.
diff --git a/qemu-nbd.c b/qemu-nbd.c
index 1f7b2a03f5..00c07fd27e 100644
--- a/qemu-nbd.c
+++ b/qemu-nbd.c
@@ -787,6 +787,8 @@ int main(int argc, char **argv)
             flags &= ~BDRV_O_RDWR;
             break;
         case 'P':
+            warn_report("The '-P' option is deprecated; use --image-opts with "
+                        "a raw device wrapper for subset exports instead");
             if (qemu_strtoi(optarg, NULL, 0, &partition) < 0 ||
                 partition < 1 || partition > 8) {
                 error_report("Invalid partition '%s'", optarg);
diff --git a/qemu-nbd.texi b/qemu-nbd.texi
index 386bece468..d0c5182814 100644
--- a/qemu-nbd.texi
+++ b/qemu-nbd.texi
@@ -56,8 +56,10 @@ auto-detecting.
 @item -r, --read-only
 Export the disk as read-only.
 @item -P, --partition=@var{num}
-Only expose MBR partition @var{num}.  Understands physical partitions
-1-4 and logical partitions 5-8.
+Deprecated: Only expose MBR partition @var{num}.  Understands physical
+partitions 1-4 and logical partition 5. New code should instead use
+@option{--image-opts} with the raw driver wrapping a subset of the
+original image.
 @item -B, --bitmap=@var{name}
 If @var{filename} has a qcow2 persistent bitmap @var{name}, expose
 that bitmap via the ``qemu:dirty-bitmap:@var{name}'' context