qemu-img(1)
NAME
qemu-img - QEMU disk image utility
SYNOPSIS
qemu-img command [command options]
DESCRIPTION
qemu-img allows you to create, convert and modify images offline. It can handle all image formats supported by QEMU. Warning: Never use qemu-img to modify images in use by a running virtual machine or any other process; this may destroy the image. Also, be aware that querying an image that is being modified by another process may encounter inconsistent state.
OPTIONS
The following commands are supported:
check [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-q] [-f fmt] [--output=ofmt]
[-r [leaks | all]] [-T src_cache] filename
create [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-q] [-f fmt] [-o options]
filename [size]
commit [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-q] [-f fmt] [-t cache] [-b
base] [-d] [-p] filename
compare [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-f fmt] [-F fmt] [-T
src_cache] [-p] [-q] [-s] filename1 filename2
convert [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-c] [-p] [-q] [-n] [-f
fmt] [-t cache] [-T src_cache] [-O output_fmt] [-o options] [-s
snapshot_id_or_name] [-l snapshot_param] [-S sparse_size] filename
[filename2 [...]] output_filename
info [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-f fmt] [--output=ofmt]
[--backing-chain] filename
map [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-f fmt] [--output=ofmt]
filename
snapshot [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-q] [-l | -a snapshot |
-c snapshot | -d snapshot] filename
rebase [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-q] [-f fmt] [-t cache] [-T
src_cache] [-p] [-u] -b backing_file [-F backing_fmt] filename
resize [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-q] filename [+ | -]size
amend [--object objectdef] [--image-opts] [-p] [-q] [-f fmt] [-t cache]
-o options filename
Command parameters:
filename
is a disk image filename
--object objectdef
is a QEMU user creatable object definition. See the qemu(1) manual
page for a description of the object properties. The most common
object type is a "secret", which is used to supply passwords and/or
encryption keys.
--image-opts
Indicates that the filename parameter is to be interpreted as a
full option string, not a plain filename. This parameter is
mutually exclusive with the -f and -F parameters.
fmt is the disk image format. It is guessed automatically in most
cases. See below for a description of the supported disk formats.
--backing-chain
will enumerate information about backing files in a disk image
chain. Refer below for further description.
size
is the disk image size in bytes. Optional suffixes "k" or "K"
(kilobyte, 1024) "M" (megabyte, 1024k) and "G" (gigabyte, 1024M)
and T (terabyte, 1024G) are supported. "b" is ignored.
output_filename
is the destination disk image filename
output_fmt
is the destination format
options
is a comma separated list of format specific options in a
name=value format. Use "-o ?" for an overview of the options
supported by the used format or see the format descriptions below
for details.
snapshot_param
is param used for internal snapshot, format is
'snapshot.id=[ID],snapshot.name=[NAME]' or '[ID_OR_NAME]'
snapshot_id_or_name
is deprecated, use snapshot_param instead
-c indicates that target image must be compressed (qcow format only)
-h with or without a command shows help and lists the supported
formats
-p display progress bar (compare, convert and rebase commands only).
If the -p option is not used for a command that supports it, the
progress is reported when the process receives a "SIGUSR1" signal.
-q Quiet mode - do not print any output (except errors). There's no
progress bar in case both -q and -p options are used.
-S size
indicates the consecutive number of bytes that must contain only
zeros for qemu-img to create a sparse image during conversion. This
value is rounded down to the nearest 512 bytes. You may use the
common size suffixes like "k" for kilobytes.
-t cache
specifies the cache mode that should be used with the (destination)
file. See the documentation of the emulator's "-drive cache=..."
option for allowed values.
-T src_cache
specifies the cache mode that should be used with the source
file(s). See the documentation of the emulator's "-drive cache=..."
option for allowed values.
Parameters to snapshot subcommand:
snapshot
is the name of the snapshot to create, apply or delete
-a applies a snapshot (revert disk to saved state)
-c creates a snapshot
-d deletes a snapshot
-l lists all snapshots in the given image
Parameters to compare subcommand:
-f First image format
-F Second image format
-s Strict mode - fail on different image size or sector allocation
Parameters to convert subcommand:
-n Skip the creation of the target volume
Command description:
check [-f fmt] [--output=ofmt] [-r [leaks | all]] [-T src_cache]
filename
Perform a consistency check on the disk image filename. The command
can output in the format ofmt which is either "human" or "json".
If "-r" is specified, qemu-img tries to repair any inconsistencies
found during the check. "-r leaks" repairs only cluster leaks,
whereas "-r all" fixes all kinds of errors, with a higher risk of
choosing the wrong fix or hiding corruption that has already
occurred.
Only the formats "qcow2", "qed" and "vdi" support consistency
checks.
In case the image does not have any inconsistencies, check exits
with 0. Other exit codes indicate the kind of inconsistency found
or if another error occurred. The following table summarizes all
exit codes of the check subcommand:
0 Check completed, the image is (now) consistent
1 Check not completed because of internal errors
2 Check completed, image is corrupted
3 Check completed, image has leaked clusters, but is not
corrupted
63 Checks are not supported by the image format
If "-r" is specified, exit codes representing the image state refer
to the state after (the attempt at) repairing it. That is, a
successful "-r all" will yield the exit code 0, independently of
the image state before.
create [-f fmt] [-o options] filename [size]
Create the new disk image filename of size size and format fmt.
Depending on the file format, you can add one or more options that
enable additional features of this format.
If the option backing_file is specified, then the image will record
only the differences from backing_file. No size needs to be
specified in this case. backing_file will never be modified unless
you use the "commit" monitor command (or qemu-img commit).
The size can also be specified using the size option with "-o", it
doesn't need to be specified separately in this case.
commit [-q] [-f fmt] [-t cache] [-b base] [-d] [-p] filename
Commit the changes recorded in filename in its base image or
backing file. If the backing file is smaller than the snapshot,
then the backing file will be resized to be the same size as the
snapshot. If the snapshot is smaller than the backing file, the
backing file will not be truncated. If you want the backing file
to match the size of the smaller snapshot, you can safely truncate
it yourself once the commit operation successfully completes.
The image filename is emptied after the operation has succeeded. If
you do not need filename afterwards and intend to drop it, you may
skip emptying filename by specifying the "-d" flag.
If the backing chain of the given image file filename has more than
one layer, the backing file into which the changes will be
committed may be specified as base (which has to be part of
filename's backing chain). If base is not specified, the immediate
backing file of the top image (which is filename) will be used. For
reasons of consistency, explicitly specifying base will always
imply "-d" (since emptying an image after committing to an indirect
backing file would lead to different data being read from the image
due to content in the intermediate backing chain overruling the
commit target).
compare [-f fmt] [-F fmt] [-T src_cache] [-p] [-s] [-q] filename1
filename2
Check if two images have the same content. You can compare images
with different format or settings.
The format is probed unless you specify it by -f (used for
filename1) and/or -F (used for filename2) option.
By default, images with different size are considered identical if
the larger image contains only unallocated and/or zeroed sectors in
the area after the end of the other image. In addition, if any
sector is not allocated in one image and contains only zero bytes
in the second one, it is evaluated as equal. You can use Strict
mode by specifying the -s option. When compare runs in Strict mode,
it fails in case image size differs or a sector is allocated in one
image and is not allocated in the second one.
By default, compare prints out a result message. This message
displays information that both images are same or the position of
the first different byte. In addition, result message can report
different image size in case Strict mode is used.
Compare exits with 0 in case the images are equal and with 1 in
case the images differ. Other exit codes mean an error occurred
during execution and standard error output should contain an error
message. The following table sumarizes all exit codes of the
compare subcommand:
0 Images are identical
1 Images differ
2 Error on opening an image
3 Error on checking a sector allocation
4 Error on reading data
convert [-c] [-p] [-n] [-f fmt] [-t cache] [-T src_cache] [-O
output_fmt] [-o options] [-s snapshot_id_or_name] [-l snapshot_param]
[-S sparse_size] filename [filename2 [...]] output_filename
Convert the disk image filename or a snapshot
snapshot_param(snapshot_id_or_name is deprecated) to disk image
output_filename using format output_fmt. It can be optionally
compressed ("-c" option) or use any format specific options like
encryption ("-o" option).
Only the formats "qcow" and "qcow2" support compression. The
compression is read-only. It means that if a compressed sector is
rewritten, then it is rewritten as uncompressed data.
Image conversion is also useful to get smaller image when using a
growable format such as "qcow": the empty sectors are detected and
suppressed from the destination image.
sparse_size indicates the consecutive number of bytes (defaults to
4k) that must contain only zeros for qemu-img to create a sparse
image during conversion. If sparse_size is 0, the source will not
be scanned for unallocated or zero sectors, and the destination
image will always be fully allocated.
You can use the backing_file option to force the output image to be
created as a copy on write image of the specified base image; the
backing_file should have the same content as the input's base
image, however the path, image format, etc may differ.
If the "-n" option is specified, the target volume creation will be
skipped. This is useful for formats such as "rbd" if the target
volume has already been created with site specific options that
cannot be supplied through qemu-img.
info [-f fmt] [--output=ofmt] [--backing-chain] filename
Give information about the disk image filename. Use it in
particular to know the size reserved on disk which can be different
from the displayed size. If VM snapshots are stored in the disk
image, they are displayed too. The command can output in the format
ofmt which is either "human" or "json".
If a disk image has a backing file chain, information about each
disk image in the chain can be recursively enumerated by using the
option "--backing-chain".
For instance, if you have an image chain like:
base.qcow2 <- snap1.qcow2 <- snap2.qcow2
To enumerate information about each disk image in the above chain,
starting from top to base, do:
qemu-img info --backing-chain snap2.qcow2
map [-f fmt] [--output=ofmt] filename
Dump the metadata of image filename and its backing file chain. In
particular, this commands dumps the allocation state of every
sector of filename, together with the topmost file that allocates
it in the backing file chain.
Two option formats are possible. The default format ("human") only
dumps known-nonzero areas of the file. Known-zero parts of the
file are omitted altogether, and likewise for parts that are not
allocated throughout the chain. qemu-img output will identify a
file from where the data can be read, and the offset in the file.
Each line will include four fields, the first three of which are
hexadecimal numbers. For example the first line of:
Offset Length Mapped to File
0 0x20000 0x50000 /tmp/overlay.qcow2
0x100000 0x10000 0x95380000 /tmp/backing.qcow2
means that 0x20000 (131072) bytes starting at offset 0 in the image
are available in /tmp/overlay.qcow2 (opened in "raw" format)
starting at offset 0x50000 (327680). Data that is compressed,
encrypted, or otherwise not available in raw format will cause an
error if "human" format is in use. Note that file names can
include newlines, thus it is not safe to parse this output format
in scripts.
The alternative format "json" will return an array of dictionaries
in JSON format. It will include similar information in the
"start", "length", "offset" fields; it will also include other more
specific information:
- whether the sectors contain actual data or not (boolean field
"data"; if false, the sectors are either unallocated or stored
as optimized all-zero clusters);
- whether the data is known to read as zero (boolean field
"zero");
- in order to make the output shorter, the target file is
expressed as a "depth"; for example, a depth of 2 refers to the
backing file of the backing file of filename.
In JSON format, the "offset" field is optional; it is absent in
cases where "human" format would omit the entry or exit with an
error. If "data" is false and the "offset" field is present, the
corresponding sectors in the file are not yet in use, but they are
preallocated.
For more information, consult include/block/block.h in QEMU's
source code.
snapshot [-l | -a snapshot | -c snapshot | -d snapshot ] filename
List, apply, create or delete snapshots in image filename.
rebase [-f fmt] [-t cache] [-T src_cache] [-p] [-u] -b backing_file [-F
backing_fmt] filename
Changes the backing file of an image. Only the formats "qcow2" and
"qed" support changing the backing file.
The backing file is changed to backing_file and (if the image
format of filename supports this) the backing file format is
changed to backing_fmt. If backing_file is specified as "" (the
empty string), then the image is rebased onto no backing file (i.e.
it will exist independently of any backing file).
cache specifies the cache mode to be used for filename, whereas
src_cache specifies the cache mode for reading backing files.
There are two different modes in which "rebase" can operate:
Safe mode
This is the default mode and performs a real rebase operation.
The new backing file may differ from the old one and qemu-img
rebase will take care of keeping the guest-visible content of
filename unchanged.
In order to achieve this, any clusters that differ between
backing_file and the old backing file of filename are merged
into filename before actually changing the backing file.
Note that the safe mode is an expensive operation, comparable
to converting an image. It only works if the old backing file
still exists.
Unsafe mode
qemu-img uses the unsafe mode if "-u" is specified. In this
mode, only the backing file name and format of filename is
changed without any checks on the file contents. The user must
take care of specifying the correct new backing file, or the
guest-visible content of the image will be corrupted.
This mode is useful for renaming or moving the backing file to
somewhere else. It can be used without an accessible old
backing file, i.e. you can use it to fix an image whose backing
file has already been moved/renamed.
You can use "rebase" to perform a "diff" operation on two disk
images. This can be useful when you have copied or cloned a guest,
and you want to get back to a thin image on top of a template or
base image.
Say that "base.img" has been cloned as "modified.img" by copying
it, and that the "modified.img" guest has run so there are now some
changes compared to "base.img". To construct a thin image called
"diff.qcow2" that contains just the differences, do:
qemu-img create -f qcow2 -b modified.img diff.qcow2
qemu-img rebase -b base.img diff.qcow2
At this point, "modified.img" can be discarded, since "base.img +
diff.qcow2" contains the same information.
resize filename [+ | -]size
Change the disk image as if it had been created with size.
Before using this command to shrink a disk image, you MUST use file
system and partitioning tools inside the VM to reduce allocated
file systems and partition sizes accordingly. Failure to do so
will result in data loss!
After using this command to grow a disk image, you must use file
system and partitioning tools inside the VM to actually begin using
the new space on the device.
amend [-p] [-f fmt] [-t cache] -o options filename
Amends the image format specific options for the image file
filename. Not all file formats support this operation.
NOTES
Supported image file formats:
raw Raw disk image format (default). This format has the advantage of
being simple and easily exportable to all other emulators. If your
file system supports holes (for example in ext2 or ext3 on Linux or
NTFS on Windows), then only the written sectors will reserve space.
Use "qemu-img info" to know the real size used by the image or "ls
-ls" on Unix/Linux.
Supported options:
"preallocation"
Preallocation mode (allowed values: "off", "falloc", "full").
"falloc" mode preallocates space for image by calling
posix_fallocate(). "full" mode preallocates space for image by
writing zeros to underlying storage.
qcow2
QEMU image format, the most versatile format. Use it to have
smaller images (useful if your filesystem does not supports holes,
for example on Windows), optional AES encryption, zlib based
compression and support of multiple VM snapshots.
Supported options:
"compat"
Determines the qcow2 version to use. "compat=0.10" uses the
traditional image format that can be read by any QEMU since
0.10. "compat=1.1" enables image format extensions that only
QEMU 1.1 and newer understand (this is the default). Amongst
others, this includes zero clusters, which allow efficient
copy-on-read for sparse images.
"backing_file"
File name of a base image (see create subcommand)
"backing_fmt"
Image format of the base image
"encryption"
If this option is set to "on", the image is encrypted with
128-bit AES-CBC.
The use of encryption in qcow and qcow2 images is considered to
be flawed by modern cryptography standards, suffering from a
number of design problems:
-<The AES-CBC cipher is used with predictable initialization
vectors based>
on the sector number. This makes it vulnerable to chosen
plaintext attacks which can reveal the existence of
encrypted data.
-<The user passphrase is directly used as the encryption key. A
poorly>
chosen or short passphrase will compromise the security of
the encryption.
-<In the event of the passphrase being compromised there is no
way to>
change the passphrase to protect data in any qcow images.
The files must be cloned, using a different encryption
passphrase in the new file. The original file must then be
securely erased using a program like shred, though even
this is ineffective with many modern storage technologies.
Use of qcow / qcow2 encryption is thus strongly discouraged.
Users are recommended to use an alternative encryption
technology such as the Linux dm-crypt / LUKS system.
"cluster_size"
Changes the qcow2 cluster size (must be between 512 and 2M).
Smaller cluster sizes can improve the image file size whereas
larger cluster sizes generally provide better performance.
"preallocation"
Preallocation mode (allowed values: "off", "metadata",
"falloc", "full"). An image with preallocated metadata is
initially larger but can improve performance when the image
needs to grow. "falloc" and "full" preallocations are like the
same options of "raw" format, but sets up metadata also.
"lazy_refcounts"
If this option is set to "on", reference count updates are
postponed with the goal of avoiding metadata I/O and improving
performance. This is particularly interesting with
cache=writethrough which doesn't batch metadata updates. The
tradeoff is that after a host crash, the reference count tables
must be rebuilt, i.e. on the next open an (automatic) "qemu-img
check -r all" is required, which may take some time.
This option can only be enabled if "compat=1.1" is specified.
"nocow"
If this option is set to "on", it will turn off COW of the
file. It's only valid on btrfs, no effect on other file
systems.
Btrfs has low performance when hosting a VM image file, even
more when the guest on the VM also using btrfs as file system.
Turning off COW is a way to mitigate this bad performance.
Generally there are two ways to turn off COW on btrfs: a)
Disable it by mounting with nodatacow, then all newly created
files will be NOCOW. b) For an empty file, add the NOCOW file
attribute. That's what this option does.
Note: this option is only valid to new or empty files. If there
is an existing file which is COW and has data blocks already,
it couldn't be changed to NOCOW by setting "nocow=on". One can
issue "lsattr filename" to check if the NOCOW flag is set or
not (Capital 'C' is NOCOW flag).
Other
QEMU also supports various other image file formats for
compatibility with older QEMU versions or other hypervisors,
including VMDK, VDI, VHD (vpc), VHDX, qcow1 and QED. For a full
list of supported formats see "qemu-img --help". For a more
detailed description of these formats, see the QEMU Emulation User
Documentation.
The main purpose of the block drivers for these formats is image
conversion. For running VMs, it is recommended to convert the disk
images to either raw or qcow2 in order to achieve good performance.
SEE ALSO
The HTML documentation of QEMU for more precise information and Linux user mode emulator invocation.
AUTHOR
Fabrice Bellard
2016-12-01 QEMU-IMG(1)
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