[libvirt] questions on backing chain file, block lun, active commit

While investigating active commit, I noticed that our code for probing backing chains currently guesses at type="file" vs. type="block" solely based on stat results (regular file vs. block device). Is a block device allowed to be used as <disk type='block' device='lun'> at the same time it has qcow2 format, or does use of device='lun' enforce that the block device is used with raw format? My worry is that if a lun device can be used with qcow2 format, then it can have a non-block backing file, and an active commit would convert <disk type='block' device='lun'> into <disk type='file' device='lun'> which is not valid. On a related vein, that means that an active commit currently auto-picks whether the <disk> will be listed as type='file' or type='block' solely on the stat results. Elsewhere, we allow type='file' even for block devices, where a noticeable difference is how virDomainGetBlockInfo() reports allocation (for type='file', allocation is based on how sparse the file is, but a block device is not sparse; for type='block', allocation is based on asking qemu the maximum used cluster). Should we be auto-converting to type='block' in other cases where we have stat results? For example, I posted a patch today to let the user explicitly request that virsh blockcopy to a block device will use type='block' because the existing code has always used type='file', but if we were doing things automatically, then the user would automatically get type='block' for block device destinations instead of having to request it; but has no way to forcefully list a file even when the destination is a block (at least, not until I implement virDomainBlockCopy() that takes an XML <disk> description). One drawback of autoconversion is the XML changes - with type='file', the host resource is located at xpath disk/source/@file, but with type='block', it is at xpath disk/source/@dev. If we ever convert a user's type='file' into a block device, but the user isn't expecting the conversion, then they won't be able to find the source file name in the output XML. So on that ground, autoprobing type='block' for active commit is fishy; we really should be honoring the user's input for <backingStore> rather than probing it ourselves every time. Until that point, and given that I just proposed a patch to turn on type='block' for blockcopy, where type='file' is used in all other cases, should we have the same sort of flag for active commit? -- Eric Blake eblake redhat com +1-919-301-3266 Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org