Paul Brook <paul@codesourcery.com> writes:

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IMO the no_user flag is a bug, and should not exist.

Sorry, what's that?

Usually an indication that a device has been incorrectly or inproperly converted to the qdev interface.

Can also be an indication that the device can't support multiple instances. For instance: commit 39a51dfda835a75c0ebbfd92705b96e4de77f795 Author: Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com> Date: Tue Oct 27 13:52:13 2009 +0100 qdev: Tag isa-fdc, PIIX3 IDE and PIIX4 IDE as no-user These devices are created automatically, and attempting to create another one with -device fails with "qemu: hardware error: register_ioport_write: invalid opaque". Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Anthony Liguori <aliguori@us.ibm.com> With no-user, we at least fail with a decent error message. I don't think it's fair to demand that a qdev conversion must relax restrictions that haven't otherwise bothered us to be correct and proper. We'll relax them if and when they bother us enough to make somebody send a decent patch. And yes, there are better ways to disallow multiple instances of a device than declaring it no-user. Patches welcome.