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Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] qcow3 - arbitrary metadata


From: Anthony Liguori
Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] qcow3 - arbitrary metadata
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:52:46 -0500
User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 (X11/20080501)

Paul Brook wrote:
Ease of use primarily.  Take the case of a VM appliance.  I would build a
VM appliance and in the metadata I would put:
1. My company's logo (which would show up as the icon on the file in any
file browser)
2. All the correct config for how to make the VM implementation start this
image
3. A first-run startup message with instructions
4. A click-through license agreement

The user would download and double-click a single file and the VM would
start up, ask me to agree to a license, provide me the instructions on how
to begin and just start running.

This is already broken because you're assuming a suitable version of qemu is preinstalled on the user's machine. Once you have to install qemu, you can just as easily install a frontend to provide whatever user interface you want.

If you want to distribute an appliance as a single image and you want to be able to instantly use it, I think you need something like an offset= parameter for the -drive option.

If you put everything in a tarball/zip file, you have to extract it first. You can make it a single-click operation, but you'll still have to wait for the disk to be extracted.

I don't think it's a strong enough use-case to warrant a whole new disk format, but some trickery with the current format could suffice.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori

All modern filesystems have things called "directories" or "folders" than be be used to group sets of related files.

Paul







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