[libvirt-users] Using a Windows partition as libvirt media

[Roland Giesler]

On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 11:07 AM, Martin Kletzander <mkletzan at redhat.com> wrote:
> On 06/13/2013 08:48 PM, Roland Giesler wrote:
>> Surely there must be someone here that knows how to do this?  Maybe
>> someone that has used some other partition type in this way?
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 10:06 PM, Roland Giesler <roland at giesler.za.net> wrote:
>>> I'm running Ubuntu desktop 12.10 with libvirt and virt-manager (gui).
>>>
>>> I have been led to believe that it is possible to use and existing partition
>>> as the disk storage volume for a virtual machine.
>>>
>>> The windows partition is /dev/sda2, but if I use fs: Pre-formatted Block
>>> Device I can select the partion.  What I can't figure out is how to tell the
>>> vitual machine to use this volume.
>>>
>
> If I'm not mistaken, the fact that it is only a partition (and not whole
> disk), you cannot passthrough it to the guest as a lun, but that
> shouldn't be a problem for you.

I'm not an expert with libvirt, although I have a substantial number
of operational systems.  I'm not sure I understand exactly how to
create this, since I always get prompted for a storage path, not
matter which option I choose. As I understand it, there should not be
a storage path for a "new device", since I want to just use an
existing device.

I find the documentation hard to understand: Which option should I use
when defining this volume?  Also, when does one use a "pool" and when
a disk without a pool?  I suppose I have to dig into
http://wiki.libvirt.org a little deeper to get some understanding of
the finer technical aspects of configuring this, but what I'm looking
for is not really there.

All the options for disk storage are at
http://libvirt.org/formatstorage.html, so I'll dig in there as well.

>
>>> I tried with virt-manager, but the only options I have are
>>>
>>> * Local media
>>> * Network install
>>> * Network Boot
>>> * Import Existing Disk Image
>>>
>
> You should be able to safely select the last option and
> virt-{install,manager} will detect that it is a block device and use
> <disk type='block' device='disk'> for the disk.

No, it doesn't.  :-( It wants to create a new storage location in the
selected area when I create the machine.  Seems I'll have to do this
manually.

thanks so far.

regards

Roland

>
> Martin
>