Re: MBR plus emulated FAT

[Csepp]

Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com> writes:

> On Fri, Jan 27, 2023 at 01:00:05AM +0100, Csepp wrote:
>> Hi!
>> 
>> Would it be possible to store the metadata for emulated FAT partitions
>> backed by host directories?  It would make installing Windows 98 much
>> more seamless, since it would be able to set the boot flag during
>> install. I have a 9front install that uses no block devices and gets its
>> root file system via a simple 9P server, I've found that extremely
>> useful, since it lets me back up or modify files directly from the host.
>> 
>> I don't have that much free time, but if it wouldn't be too difficult to
>> implement this and someone helped, I could try to do it myself.  But
>> honestly I would be super thankful if someone else implemented it
>> instead.
>
> I wonder if you can already accomplish this using nbdkit-floppy-plugin
> (expose a directory as a FAT file system over NBD), then connect qemu
> as an NBD client, rather than having to implement this all in qemu
> proper.

Didn't know abut that program, thanks!  Unfortunately:
> The plugin does not support writes.
https://manpages.debian.org/bullseye/nbdkit/nbdkit-floppy-plugin.1.en.html