This series allow user to read internal snapshot's contents without qemu-img convert. Another purpose is that, when qemu is online and have taken an internal snapshot, let user invoke qemu-nbd to do any thing on it except write.
This brings two interesting issues: 1 is it safe to let qemu-nbd and qemu access that file at same time? I think it is safe, since qemu-nbd is read only. The data will be correct from qemu-nbd, if qemu does not delete that snapshot when qemu-nbd is running, and data is flushed to storage after qemu take that snapshot so that qemu-nbd would see the correct data. 2 should an nbd-server exporting internal snapshot be added in qemu? I think no. Compared with driver-backup, the snapshot, or COW happens in storage level, so it allows another program to read it itself. Actually it should be OK to let another server other than qemu's host, do the export I/O job, if data is flushed. Next step: As demonstrated before, an explict API should be added, which make sure all I/O request is flushed and sent to underlining storage, and cache is sync if it is writeback type. So at qemu level, we can make sure no request is left behind, before qemu-nbd start. That API should also benefit 3rd party block snapshot solution, such as LVM2. More: With this patch and previous qcow2 snapshot at block device level, I think export/import/backup solution around qcow2, is nearly complete at qemu's level. It can do similar things as backing chain but with better performance, Some small optimization place are left: 1 compare two snapshot's data to get the diff with help of qcow2's L1/L2 table. 2 convertion between external snapshot and internal snapshot. This series need following series applied first: [PATCH V5 0/8] add internal snapshot support at block device level http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2013-07/msg01831.html Wenchao Xia (4): 1 snapshot: distinguish id and name in load_tmp 2 qemu-nbd: support internal snapshot export 3 qemu-nbd: add doc for internal snapshot export 4 qemu-iotests: add 057 internal snapshot export with qemu-nbd case block/qcow2-snapshot.c | 16 +++++++- block/qcow2.h | 5 ++- block/snapshot.c | 37 ++++++++++++++++++- include/block/block_int.h | 4 ++- include/block/snapshot.h | 4 ++- qemu-img.c | 7 +++- qemu-nbd.c | 56 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++- qemu-nbd.texi | 3 ++ tests/qemu-iotests/057 | 87 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ tests/qemu-iotests/057.out | 26 +++++++++++++ tests/qemu-iotests/group | 1 + 11 files changed, 237 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-) create mode 100755 tests/qemu-iotests/057 create mode 100644 tests/qemu-iotests/057.out