From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1L5iKA-0004xt-PW for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 27 Nov 2008 09:58:34 -0500 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1L5iKA-0004xJ-B9 for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 27 Nov 2008 09:58:34 -0500 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=52351 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1L5iKA-0004xE-1I for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 27 Nov 2008 09:58:34 -0500 Received: from ey-out-1920.google.com ([74.125.78.147]:64054) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1L5iK8-00022r-QL for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 27 Nov 2008 09:58:33 -0500 Received: by ey-out-1920.google.com with SMTP id 4so430537eyk.4 for ; Thu, 27 Nov 2008 06:58:31 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 09:58:30 -0500 From: "Ben Taylor" Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] qemu version updates break Windows activation In-Reply-To: <20081127144742.GI18400@shareable.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <492EB0EA.50103@redhat.com> <20081127144742.GI18400@shareable.org> Reply-To: qemu-devel@nongnu.org List-Id: qemu-devel.nongnu.org List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: qemu-devel@nongnu.org On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 9:47 AM, Jamie Lokier wrote: > Avi Kivity wrote: >> Frederik Himpe wrote: >> >Every time qemu/kvm is updated, the version strings in the virtual >> >hardware change, which breaks an activated windows installation in qemu. >> >Windows thinks it's running on other hardware, and requires manual re- >> >activation by phone. >> > >> >Could the version strings please be made optional in the hardware? >> > >> > >> >> Perhaps we should switch the version strings not to include the qemu >> version, but instead carry their own version numbers, which would bump >> on on incompatible change (presumably, never). > > Microsoft Virtual PC lets you override the version strings and UUIDs > yourself for some things, I think. They are in the XML VM description > file, which is what you click on start a VM. > > This is helpful for moving existing VM images from one hypervisor to > another without needing Windows re-activation. VMware probably does > the same, to be able to run Virtual PC images unchanged. Being to set a bios string may also allow things like recovery disks to be used in qemu (My HP recovery disks only boot on the system it's built for, via a bios string - I discovered this while trying to make it partition the disk differently during the restore).