[libvirt-users] drive-backup command permission denied.. and need some clarification

[Kashyap Chamarthy]

On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 02:08:41PM -0600, Eric Blake wrote:
> On 10/14/2014 11:52 AM, Jd wrote:
> > Hi
> > 
> >     * Trying to get drive-backup command, getting permission denied. :(
> > 
> >        sudo virsh qemu-monitor-command --hmp my-instance --cmd
> > drive_backup drive-virtio-disk0 /tmp/foo.vda.img
> 
> Ouch. qemu-monitor-command is explicitly unsupported, precisely because
> it goes behind libvirt's back and is likely to get libvirt confused.
> Most likely, the reason permission is denied is that you are failing to
> set the sVirt permissions of the file you are trying to use (this
> includes setting all of SELinux/apparmor labels, the disk lease manager,
> and cgroup ACLs).  You really are better off experimenting on raw qemu
> without libvirt, or else waiting for (or helping to patch) libvirt to
> drive the command directly, as trying to issue the raw monitor command
> while libvirt is still managing the domain is a recipe for disaster, as
> you just found.
> 
> > 
> >        Looks like apparmor issue. What can I modify to make this work ?
> > 
> >      * Couple of other questions
> >        drive-backup :
> >           * The doc seems to claim that it gives a point in time copy of
> > the drive. So I assume that no need to take any snapshot etc.. and merge
> > back in.
> 
> My understanding of the qemu command is that given:
> 
> [base] <- [active]
> 
> calling drive-backup will create:
> 
> [base] <- [snapshot](frozen at point of command)
>         \- [active](still modified by guest)
> 
> 
> >           * does it internally use snapshot ? Does this hook in to doing
> > fsfreeze and unfreeze using guest agent and does it automagically ?  I
> > do not see any options here.
> 
> I have not yet had time to look into wiring up libvirt to drive the
> command; the libvirt solution will probably have the optional ability to
> quiesce the file system around the snapshot event, similar to the
> existing --quiesce flag of virDomainSnapshotCreateXML (in fact,
> virDomainSnaphostCreateXML might even BE the interface we use to wire up
> the qemu drive-backup command)
> 
> >           * Suppose I have base <-- sn1 --<-- sn2 (QEMU active) .  does
> > it take data from sn2 only ? or base+sn1+sn2 .. full drive  and creates
> > a new qcow2 sparse file.
> 
> If I understand the qemu command correctly, you have three choices via
> the 'sync' option: the entire disk (the snapshot is a flat image
> containing contents of base+sn1+sn2 with no backing file), a shallow
> copy (the snapshot is a qcow2 file containing contents of sn2 with
> backing file of sn1), or all new I/O (the snapshot file is populated
> only when additional writes occur to sn2; the more writes into the
> snapshot, the more sn2 has diverged from the point in time you created
> the snapshot; which might be more useful once persistent dirty bitmap
> tracking is added to qemu).  You may get better answers to questions
> like this on the qemu list, since libvirt can't drive it yet.

As an addendum, here's a small QMP example to test QMP 'drive-backup'
command:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
#!/bin/bash

exec 3<>/dev/tcp/localhost/4444
echo -e "{ 'execute': 'qmp_capabilities' }" >&3
read response <&3
echo $response
echo -e "{ 'execute': 'drive-backup', 'arguments':
      { 'device': 'drive-ide0-0-0', 'sync': 'full', 'target':
      '/var/lib/libvirt/images/backup-copy.qcow2', 'mode': 'absolute-paths', 'format': 'qcow2' } }" >&3
read response <&3
echo $response
echo -e "{execute: 'query-block-jobs'}" >&3
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Of course, the above assumes a QEMU instance is running with QMP server:

    $ qemu-system-x86_64. . . -qmp tcp:localhost:4444,server

-- 
/kashyap