qemu question/clarification

[Gene Czarcinski]

qemu documentation such as the man page for qemu-img says that only versions 3 
and 4 for the vmdk files are supported.  What does this mean?

If I run "strings" on a vmdk (sparse file, single image), I get some text lines 
which appear to describe the virtual disk.  One of these lines is:
   HWversion=n

If I create a VMware guest under Workstation 6.5.2 and specify Workstation 4 
compatibility, I get HWversion=3.  If I specify Workstation 6.5.2 
compatibility, then I get HWversion=7.  I assume that HWversion=4 will be true 
for Workstation 5 compatibility but I have not tested that.

Is this what is meant by "versions 3 and 4" compatibility by qemu?

I have run qemu-img to convert various vmdk files and it does not complain 
about non HWversion=3 or HWversion=4 files.  Furthermore, the converted files 
seem OK when examined by guestfish.

Gene

[Mark McLoughlin]

On Thu, 2009-07-16 at 14:22 -0400, Gene Czarcinski wrote:
> qemu documentation such as the man page for qemu-img says that only versions 3 
> and 4 for the vmdk files are supported.  What does this mean?

Try "hexdump -C -n 4" on the files - vmdk.c says:

#define VMDK3_MAGIC (('C' << 24) | ('O' << 16) | ('W' << 8) | 'D')
#define VMDK4_MAGIC (('K' << 24) | ('D' << 16) | ('M' << 8) | 'V')

Cheers,
Mark.