From patchwork Tue Dec  6 16:20:56 2011
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Subject: RFC: raw device support for block device targets
From: Alex Bligh <alex@alex.org.uk>
X-Patchwork-Id: 129726
Message-Id: <958CDBC95A3252B592B5E3C9@nimrod.local>
To: qemu-devel@nongnu.org
Cc: Alex Bligh <alex@alex.org.uk>
Date: Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:20:56 +0000

qemu-img convert appears to support block devices as input, but not
as output. That is irritating, as when using qemu-img convert to
convert qcow to raw on a block partition, an intermediate file has
to be used, which slows things down and pointlessly uses disk space.

The problem is that ftruncate() is being called on the output file
in order ensure it is sufficiently large, and this fails on
block devices.

I appreciate there may be other calls that fail depending on the
input file format, but these will presumably be error checked
at the time.

Is it therefore worth skipping the ftruncate() if the block device
is large enough, and at least attempting to proceed further? Something
like the following (not-even compile tested) patch?


diff --git a/block/raw-posix.c b/block/raw-posix.c
index 2ee5d69..be9a371 100644
--- a/block/raw-posix.c
+++ b/block/raw-posix.c
@@ -573,9 +573,29 @@ static int raw_create(const char *filename, 
QEMUOptionParameter *options)
     if (fd < 0) {
         result = -errno;
     } else {
+
+        struct stat sb;
+
+        if (-1 == fstat(dest, &sb)) {
+            result = -errno;
+            goto close;
+        }
+
+        /* block devices do not support truncate. If the device is large
+           enough, then it will do */
+
+        if (S_ISBLK(sb.st_mode)) {
+            /* divide to prevent overflow */
+            if (sb.st_size / BDRV_SECTOR_SIZE < total_size)
+                result = -ENOSPC;
+            goto close;
+        }
+
         if (ftruncate(fd, total_size * BDRV_SECTOR_SIZE) != 0) {
             result = -errno;
         }
+
+    close:
         if (close(fd) != 0) {
             result = -errno;