On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 9:35 AM, Iain J. Watson <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hello, > > I am trying to find a way to use backing files to make snapshots of > running VMs. The idea is I pause the VM, use qemu-img to create a new > disk file with the currently used file as a backing file, swap the > images then unpause the VM. > > Commands would be something like: > > ---------- > (qemu) stop > (qemu) drive_del virtio0 > > $ qemu-img create -f qcow2 -b os-disk-0.qcow2 os-disk-1.qcow2 > > (qemu) drive_add 0 file=os-disk-1.qcow2 # I'm not 100% sure on the > drive_add syntax > (qemu) c > ---------- > > If I try and do this just now I get the error "Can't hot-add drive to > type 7" when running the drive_add command. > > Is there another way to achieve this? Is this something that could > potentially be added or would architecture not support what I'm trying > to do? > This is probably not the answer you seek, but I create a lvm logical volume for each vm. So, if I need to backup the "pickles" vm I create a lvm snapshot, which can be done while the vm is happily running along: lvcreate -L 10G -s -n pickles_snap_`date "+%Y%m%d"` ${HOSTNAME}_vg0/pickles If I need to go back to the snapshot I can lvconvert --merge. > Cheers, > Iain Watson > -- > "Just think how stupid the average person is, > and then realize that half of them are even stupider!" > --George Carlin > -- > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in > the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html