Re: [Libguestfs] Appliance image. Why raw?

On Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 06:34:28PM +0300, Pavel Butsykin wrote: > On 20.06.2017 17:47, Richard W.M. Jones wrote: >> On Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 05:04:53PM +0300, Pavel Butsykin wrote: >>> I noticed that raw is intentionally used as image format for appliance >>> image. So I would like to ask, is there any reason to use raw as image >>> format for appliance? >> >> The simple answer is because we create the appliance image (it's an >> ext2/3/4 filesystem) using e2fsprogs, and that library wouldn't know >> how to create anything else since it always assumes it's writing >> directly to a device. >> >> https://github.com/libguestfs/supermin/blob/master/src/format_ext2.mli#L2... >> >> HTH, > > Yes, the main point is clear, thanks. > > I asked because we supply the prepared appliance, so would like to use > qcow2. Given that the applaince image is completely controlled, for > supermin and fixed appliance, in both the cases. We could use > autodetect, it is already implemented in qemu, so to add it to > libguestfs will simply. I'm going to prepare the patches, what do you > think? ./configure-time option? > Autodetection is actually not insecure with modern qemu, but people still think it is ...

Rich.