Re: [Qemu-devel] using partition images

[Paul Brook <paul@codesourcery.com>]

On Monday 08 May 2006 15:19, Jim C. Brown wrote:
> On Mon, May 08, 2006 at 02:11:36PM +0100, Paul Brook wrote:
> > > I'll work on this tonight. I've been thinking about doing this, since
> > > it would allow one to use any qemu-supported disk image format as a
> > > partition image.
> > >
> > > I can't think of any disk format that's heavily used in qemu that is
> > > normally used for partition images except for raw. OTOH it might be
> > > interesting to have qcow partition images.
> >
> > If done properly this should also allow use of vmware split image files.
>
> It'd probably be easier to fix the vmdk driver to handle these natively.
>
> If split vmdks are just a series of partition images plus an image of an
> MBR/partition table then it may be possible to hack this up via a partition
> driver that supported harddisk sharing (using multiple partition images as
> part of the same hard disk).

I think you should be aiming for a generic composite device block driver.
Then write a fake MBR block device (or whatever you want to call it).

To use a single partition you create a composite device consisting of the fake 
mbr and the raw partition.

A vmware split image file is just a composite of several raw images with a 
funny config file.

Paul