Commit 443668ca rewrote the write_zeroes logic to guarantee that
an unaligned request never crosses a cluster boundary. But
in the rewrite, the new code assumed that at most one iteration
would be needed to get to an alignment boundary.
However, it is easy to trigger an assertion failure: the Linux
kernel limits loopback devices to advertise a max_transfer of
only 64k. Any operation that requires falling back to writes
rather than more efficient zeroing must obey max_transfer during
that fallback, which means an unaligned head may require multiple
iterations of the write fallbacks before reaching the aligned
boundaries, when layering a format with clusters larger than 64k
atop the protocol of file access to a loopback device.
Test case:
$ qemu-img create -f qcow2 -o cluster_size=1M file 10M
$ losetup /dev/loop2 /path/to/file
$ qemu-io -f qcow2 /dev/loop2
qemu-io> w 7m 1k
qemu-io> w -z 8003584 2093056
In fairness to Denis (as the original listed author of the culprit
commit), the faulty logic for at most one iteration is probably all
my fault in reworking his idea. But the solution is to restore what
was in place prior to that commit: when dealing with an unaligned
head or tail, iterate as many times as necessary while fragmenting
the operation at max_transfer boundaries.
Reported-by: Ed Swierk <eswierk@skyportsystems.com>
CC: qemu-stable@nongnu.org
CC: Denis V. Lunev <den@openvz.org>
Signed-off-by: Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Max Reitz <mreitz@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Kevin Wolf <kwolf@redhat.com>
QEMU README
===========
QEMU is a generic and open source machine & userspace emulator and
virtualizer.
QEMU is capable of emulating a complete machine in software without any
need for hardware virtualization support. By using dynamic translation,
it achieves very good performance. QEMU can also integrate with the Xen
and KVM hypervisors to provide emulated hardware while allowing the
hypervisor to manage the CPU. With hypervisor support, QEMU can achieve
near native performance for CPUs. When QEMU emulates CPUs directly it is
capable of running operating systems made for one machine (e.g. an ARMv7
board) on a different machine (e.g. an x86_64 PC board).
QEMU is also capable of providing userspace API virtualization for Linux
and BSD kernel interfaces. This allows binaries compiled against one
architecture ABI (e.g. the Linux PPC64 ABI) to be run on a host using a
different architecture ABI (e.g. the Linux x86_64 ABI). This does not
involve any hardware emulation, simply CPU and syscall emulation.
QEMU aims to fit into a variety of use cases. It can be invoked directly
by users wishing to have full control over its behaviour and settings.
It also aims to facilitate integration into higher level management
layers, by providing a stable command line interface and monitor API.
It is commonly invoked indirectly via the libvirt library when using
open source applications such as oVirt, OpenStack and virt-manager.
QEMU as a whole is released under the GNU General Public License,
version 2. For full licensing details, consult the LICENSE file.
Building
========
QEMU is multi-platform software intended to be buildable on all modern
Linux platforms, OS-X, Win32 (via the Mingw64 toolchain) and a variety
of other UNIX targets. The simple steps to build QEMU are:
mkdir build
cd build
../configure
make
Additional information can also be found online via the QEMU website:
http://qemu-project.org/Hosts/Linux
http://qemu-project.org/Hosts/W32
Submitting patches
==================
The QEMU source code is maintained under the GIT version control system.
git clone git://git.qemu-project.org/qemu.git
When submitting patches, the preferred approach is to use 'git
format-patch' and/or 'git send-email' to format & send the mail to the
qemu-devel@nongnu.org mailing list. All patches submitted must contain
a 'Signed-off-by' line from the author. Patches should follow the
guidelines set out in the HACKING and CODING_STYLE files.
Additional information on submitting patches can be found online via
the QEMU website
http://qemu-project.org/Contribute/SubmitAPatch
http://qemu-project.org/Contribute/TrivialPatches
Bug reporting
=============
The QEMU project uses Launchpad as its primary upstream bug tracker. Bugs
found when running code built from QEMU git or upstream released sources
should be reported via:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/
If using QEMU via an operating system vendor pre-built binary package, it
is preferable to report bugs to the vendor's own bug tracker first. If
the bug is also known to affect latest upstream code, it can also be
reported via launchpad.
For additional information on bug reporting consult:
http://qemu-project.org/Contribute/ReportABug
Contact
=======
The QEMU community can be contacted in a number of ways, with the two
main methods being email and IRC
- qemu-devel@nongnu.org
http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel
- #qemu on irc.oftc.net
Information on additional methods of contacting the community can be
found online via the QEMU website:
http://qemu-project.org/Contribute/StartHere
-- End