1. 18 7月, 2017 1 次提交
    • K
      live-block-ops.txt: Rename, rewrite, and improve it · 8508eee7
      Kashyap Chamarthy 提交于
      This patch documents (including their QMP invocations) all the four
      major kinds of live block operations:
      
        - `block-stream`
        - `block-commit`
        - `drive-mirror` (& `blockdev-mirror`)
        - `drive-backup` (& `blockdev-backup`)
      
      Things considered while writing this document:
      
        - Use reStructuredText as markup language (with the goal of generating
          the HTML output using the Sphinx Documentation Generator).  It is
          gentler on the eye, and can be trivially converted to different
          formats.  (Another reason: upstream QEMU is considering to switch to
          Sphinx, which uses reStructuredText as its markup language.)
      
        - Raw QMP JSON output vs. 'qmp-shell'.  I debated with myself whether
          to only show raw QMP JSON output (as that is the canonical
          representation), or use 'qmp-shell', which takes key-value pairs.  I
          settled on the approach of: for the first occurrence of a command,
          use raw JSON; for subsequent occurrences, use 'qmp-shell', with an
          occasional exception.
      
        - Usage of `-blockdev` command-line.
      
        - Usage of 'node-name' vs. file path to refer to disks.  While we have
          `blockdev-{mirror, backup}` as 'node-name'-alternatives for
          `drive-{mirror, backup}`, the `block-commit` command still operates
          on file names for parameters 'base' and 'top'.  So I added a caveat
          at the beginning to that effect.
      
          Refer this related thread that I started (where I learnt
          `block-stream` was recently reworked to accept 'node-name' for 'top'
          and 'base' parameters):
          https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2017-05/msg06466.html
          "[RFC] Making 'block-stream', and 'block-commit' accept node-name"
      
      All commands showed in this document were tested while documenting.
      
      Thanks: Eric Blake for the section: "A note on points-in-time vs file
      names".  This useful bit was originally articulated by Eric in his
      KVMForum 2015 presentation, so I included that specific bit in this
      document.
      Signed-off-by: NKashyap Chamarthy <kchamart@redhat.com>
      Reviewed-by: NEric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>
      Message-id: 20170717105205.32639-3-kchamart@redhat.com
      Signed-off-by: NJeff Cody <jcody@redhat.com>
      8508eee7