Mounting a raw disk image used by a VM on the host system

[tuner23]

hi,


i have a virtual machine running with qemu-kvm, and a secondary disk-image mounted with

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 -drive file=/data/vms/kube/kube-storage.img,format=raw,if=none,id=drive-ide0-1-1

On the VM the image is mounted under /storage/

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/dev/sdb on /storage type ext4 (rw,relatime,seclabel,data=ordered)

Now, when i mount the image read-only on the host system

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/data/vms/kube/kube-storage.img on /mnt/tmp type ext4 (ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)

it works, but does not syncronize the changes made on the virtual machine.

E.g. when i do on the VM

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# touch /storage/test
# ll /storage/test
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 0 21. Dez 15:10 /storage/test

I can see the changes only when i unmount and mount the image again:

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# ll /mnt/tmp/
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4.0K Dec 25 10:32 .
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4.0K Jan 22  2018 ..
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4.0K Dec 21 14:54 data

# umount /mnt/tmp

# mount -o loop /data/vms/kube/kube-storage.img /mnt/tmp
# mount -o remount,ro /mnt/tmp/

# ll /mnt/tmp/
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4.0K Dec 25 10:33 .
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4.0K Jan 22  2018 ..
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4.0K Dec 21 14:54 data
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    0 Dec 25 10:33 test

The other thing is, that i can't mount the image read-only directly, but have to use remount..

Can someone explain me what happens here, and maybe also which options to use, to make it
work..


Thanks,
Tony.

[NeddySeagoon]

tuner23,

You must not mount the same filesystem multiple times at the same time.

Each mount causes information to be cached. As each mount is unaware of any others, it assumes that it has exclusive use of the filesystem.
Therefore its cache is always correct.
Even read only second mounts are not safe with journeled filesysems as the second mount will see the filesystem as 'dirty' and replay the journal. So a read only mount actually causes writes.

There is no cache coherency across multiple mounts so you can destroy the filesystem.

[tuner23]

Ok, thanks for the information.

So i will have to use another way instead..

[Ionen]

Being lazy and not caring much for performance, I often just run sshd in the VM and use sshfs like I do with everything else. You could of course use any other kind of network mounts that both the guest and host can use.

If VM isn't granted network access or want better performance, then may want to look into virtfs/9p+virtio that allow to create a safely shared path much like what you're trying to accomplish, but I've never tried it personally. Will need support both in host and guest. Could be other/better solutions but I'm no expert.

[NeddySeagoon]

tuner23,

Sharing a directory can be made to work. NFS does locking correctly, so it all works safely.
NFS also offers a feature called local locking, you must not use that on read/write NFS mounts as you need the locks on the NFS server to that other users can see them.
Local locking is OK on a read only mount.

Share something over NFS and mount the NFS share anywhere you like, including on the local system.
You must not access the NFS shared area directly from its host as NFS won't know.