On 2018-08-20 04:07, Fam Zheng wrote: > On Thu, 08/16 04:20, Max Reitz wrote: >> No, the real issue is that dd is still not implemented just as a >> frontend to convert. Which it should be. I'm not sure dd was a very >> good idea from the start, and now it should ideally be a frontend to >> convert. >> >> (My full opinion on the matter: dd has a horrible interface. I don't >> quite see why we replicated that inside qemu-img. Also, if you want to >> use dd, why not use qemu-nbd + Linux nbd device + real dd?) > > The intention is that dd is a familiar interface and allows for operating on > portions of images. It is much more convenient than "qemu-nbd + Linux nbd + > dd" > and a bit more convenient than "booting a Linux VM, attaching the image as a > virtual disk, then use dd in the guest". More so when writing tests.
This is my fault, but frankly, since I always get seek and skip mixed up, whenever I use dd for anything but copying a whole image, I have to look into the man page anyway, so the advantage over modprobe nbd && qemu-nbd -c /dev/nbd0 is gone. And in my opinion the fact that it is a familiar interface doesn't make it less of a horrible interface. My main issue is that it's built right into qemu-img where it shouldn't be. We have convert, you can now even access portions of images with the raw driver, so it really should have been just a script on top. Max
signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature
