qemu-e2k/tests/qemu-iotests/069
Stefan Hajnoczi 550830f935 block: delete cow block driver
This patch removes support for the cow file format.

Normally we do not break backwards compatibility but in this case there
is no impact and it is the most logical option.  Extraordinary claims
require extraordinary evidence so I will show why removing the cow block
driver is the right thing to do.

The cow file format is the disk image format for Usermode Linux, a way
of running a Linux system in userspace.  The performance of UML was
never great and it was hacky, but it enjoyed some popularity before
hardware virtualization support became mainstream.

QEMU's block/cow.c is supposed to read this image file format.
Unfortunately the file format was underspecified:

1. Earlier Linux versions used the MAXPATHLEN constant for the backing
   filename field.  The value of MAXPATHLEN can change, so Linux
   switched to a 4096 literal but QEMU has a 1024 literal.

2. Padding was not used on the header struct (both in the Linux kernel
   and in QEMU) so the struct layout varied across architectures.  In
   particular, i386 and x86_64 were different due to int64_t alignment
   differences.  Linux now uses __attribute__((packed)), QEMU does not.

Therefore:

1. QEMU cow images do not conform to the Linux cow image file format.

2. cow images cannot be shared between different host architectures.

This means QEMU cow images are useless and QEMU has not had bug reports
from users actually hitting these issues.

Let's get rid of this thing, it serves no purpose and no one will be
affected.

Signed-off-by: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>
Message-id: 1410877464-20481-1-git-send-email-stefanha@redhat.com
Signed-off-by: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@redhat.com>
2014-09-22 11:39:45 +01:00

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#!/bin/bash
#
# Test case for deleting a backing file
#
# Copyright (C) 2013 Red Hat, Inc.
#
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
#
# creator
owner=mreitz@redhat.com
seq="$(basename $0)"
echo "QA output created by $seq"
here="$PWD"
tmp=/tmp/$$
status=1 # failure is the default!
_cleanup()
{
_cleanup_test_img
}
trap "_cleanup; exit \$status" 0 1 2 3 15
# get standard environment, filters and checks
. ./common.rc
. ./common.filter
_supported_fmt qed qcow qcow2 vmdk
_supported_proto file
_supported_os Linux
_unsupported_imgopts "subformat=monolithicFlat" "subformat=twoGbMaxExtentFlat"
IMG_SIZE=128K
echo
echo "=== Creating an image with a backing file and deleting that file ==="
echo
TEST_IMG="$TEST_IMG.base" _make_test_img $IMG_SIZE
_make_test_img -b "$TEST_IMG.base" $IMG_SIZE
rm -f "$TEST_IMG.base"
# Just open the image and close it right again (this should print an error message)
$QEMU_IO -c quit "$TEST_IMG" 2>&1 | _filter_testdir | _filter_imgfmt
# success, all done
echo "*** done"
rm -f $seq.full
status=0