[Libguestfs] Appliance image. Why raw?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

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#L22-L29
> >
> >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.

-- 
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