After verifying it's not PEBKAC it turns out that qemu 0.9.0 will not run encrypted image (created with qemu-img create -e). I was pointed to (thanks!) a patch that fixes it, available at <http://maiux.com/files/Qemu_0.9.0_Windows_binaries_(encrypted_drive_images_bugfix_)13/encrypted.patch.gz> After applying that patch and rebuilding qemu I generated one qcow2 image with encryption enabled and one with it disabled, and installed some linux I had handy on both. That worked (so yes, now I am able to run an encrypted image), and 'strings' ran on both produced lots of readable text on the plaintext one, and some garbled stuff on encrypted one, so apparently it didn't stop the encryption working. -- viq
