Re: [Qemu-devel] unable to set SATA serial with a spaces

[John Snow <jsnow@redhat.com>]

On 02/19/2015 02:48 PM, Alan Latteri wrote:
> I am virtualzing a physical server for which I need to set the SCSI/SATA
> drive serial. It is comprised of 12 " " spaces then 8 letter/digits. If
> I exclude the spaces, the drive serial is not accurate. If I include the
> spaces I get the following error.
>
> error: Failed to start domain test1
> error: internal error: driver serial ' ABCD1234' contains unsafe characters
>
> virsh edit
> Centos 7.0
> 3.19.0-1.el7.elrepo.x86_64
> QEMU emulator version 1.5.3 (qemu-kvm-1.5.3-60.el7.centos.7), Copyright
> (c) 2003-2008 Fabrice Bellard
>

Are you sure you need to input the spaces? the standard inquiry reply 
that outputs the serial uses spaces as padding, so even if you use 
serial "ABCD1234" the inquiry command is going to tell you
"            ABCD1234".

Do you have software that relies on the serial number and can tell the 
difference between spaces present and no spaces present?

--js