[Qemu-devel] Re: [PATCH] Add serial number support for virtio_blk

[john cooper <john.cooper@redhat.com>]

Anthony Liguori wrote:
> 
> I'm trying to write a test case for this functionality.  The first thing
> I observed is that serial isn't included in info block.  Could you add
> it?  This will let us figure out what the serial number ought to be so
> that we can then verify it in the guest.

Yes, it seems to be missing for all block devices.

> So far, I don't see a wonderful way to verify a serial number in the
> guest.  Looks like the information can be gotten indirectly via hdparm
> -i or by looking at /dev/disk/by-id.  The later doesn't have an easy to
> predict name though.
> 
> Any thoughts?

Initially I added a new ioctl in the guest driver
to mine out the serial number.  Admittedly it was
a wart as both IDE and SCSI already had methods
to accomplish the same.  Emulating an IDE IDENTIFY
command was the simplest alternative and allowed
existing utilities such as 'hdparm -i /dev/vda' to
retrieve the information, which is essentially
what I had used to verify the functionality.

-john

-- 
john.cooper@redhat.com