qemu-e2k/ui
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
..
cocoa.m block: delete cow block driver 2014-09-22 11:39:45 +01:00
console.c qemu-char: Rename register_char_driver_qapi() to register_char_driver() 2014-09-16 23:36:32 +01:00
curses_keys.h
curses.c input/curses: add kbd delay between keydown and keyup events 2014-06-04 08:40:42 +02:00
cursor_hidden.xpm
cursor_left_ptr.xpm
cursor.c
d3des.c
d3des.h
gtk.c ui/gtk: Restore keyboard focus after Page change 2014-07-11 10:44:00 +02:00
input-keymap.c
input-legacy.c
input.c
keymaps.c
keymaps.h
Makefile.objs
qemu-pixman.c console: add qemu_pixman_linebuf_copy 2014-09-05 13:27:11 +02:00
qemu-x509.h
sdl2-keymap.h sdl2: keymap fixups 2014-09-16 08:07:05 +02:00
sdl2.c sdl2: drop sdl_zoom.h 2014-09-16 08:07:05 +02:00
sdl_keysym.h
sdl_zoom_template.h
sdl_zoom.c
sdl_zoom.h
sdl.c console: stop using PixelFormat 2014-09-05 13:27:11 +02:00
spice-core.c spice: call qemu_spice_set_passwd() during init 2014-09-16 08:09:03 +02:00
spice-display.c spice: make sure we don't overflow ssd->buf 2014-09-05 12:19:50 +02:00
spice-input.c
vgafont.h
vnc_keysym.h
vnc-auth-sasl.c
vnc-auth-sasl.h
vnc-auth-vencrypt.c
vnc-auth-vencrypt.h
vnc-enc-hextile-template.h
vnc-enc-hextile.c
vnc-enc-tight.c console: Remove unused QEMU_BIG_ENDIAN_FLAG 2014-09-05 15:38:04 +02:00
vnc-enc-tight.h
vnc-enc-zlib.c
vnc-enc-zrle-template.c
vnc-enc-zrle.c
vnc-enc-zrle.h
vnc-enc-zywrle-template.c
vnc-enc-zywrle.h
vnc-jobs.c
vnc-jobs.h
vnc-palette.c
vnc-palette.h
vnc-tls.c vnc-tls: Clean up dead store in vnc_set_x509_credential() 2014-09-18 08:01:53 +02:00
vnc-tls.h
vnc-ws.c
vnc-ws.h
vnc.c ui/vnc: set TCP_NODELAY 2014-09-17 15:14:41 +02:00
vnc.h vnc update fix 2014-07-25 09:43:31 +02:00
x_keymap.c
x_keymap.h