Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 1/1] blk: do not select PFLASH device for internal snapshot

[Kevin Wolf <kwolf@redhat.com>]

Am 12.01.2016 um 16:10 hat Denis V. Lunev geschrieben:
> On 01/12/2016 05:16 PM, Kevin Wolf wrote:
> >Am 12.01.2016 um 07:03 hat Denis V. Lunev geschrieben:
> >>There is a long-long story. OVMF VMs can not be snapsotted using
> >>'virsh snapshot' as they have "pflash" device which is configured as
> >>"raw" image. There was a discussion in the past about that.
> >>
> >>Good description has been provided on topic by Laszlo Ersek, see below:
> >>
> >>"It is true that a pflash drive is "just a drive" *internally* to QEMU.
> >>It is also true that it more or less takes the same -drive options as
> >>any other *disk* drive. But those facts are just implementation details.
> >>
> >>The relevant trait of pflash storage files is that they are not *disk
> >>images*, on the libvirt domain XML level. They are not created in
> >>storage pools, you cannot specify their caching attributes, you don't
> >>specify their guest-visible frontend in separation (like virtio-blk /
> >>     virtio-scsi / pflash). Those details are hidden (on purpose).
> >>
> >>Consequently, pflash storage files are expected to be *small* in size
> >>(in practice: identically sized to the varstore template they are
> >>instantiated from). They are created under /var/lib/libvirt/qemu/nvram.
> >>Although you can edit their path in the domain XML, they are not
> >>considered disks."
> >>
> >>Thus we should avoid selection of "pflash" drives for VM state saving.
> >>
> >>For now "pflash" is read-write raw image as it configured by libvirt.
> >>Thus there are no such images in the field and we could safely disable
> >>ability to save state to those images inside QEMU.
> >This is obviously broken. If you write to the pflash, then it needs to
> >be snapshotted in order to keep a consistent state.
> >
> >If you want to avoid snapshotting the image, make it read-only and it
> >will be skipped even today.
> >
> >Kevin
> you interpret the patch a bit wrong.
> 
> It will be snapshoted once I'll raw image with qcow2 image, but this image
> will not be selected for state saving, i.e. it will remain compact.

Sorry, I misunderstood. That's more reasonable indeed.

Kevin