o Fix a typo.

o  Describe the file formats mkimg can create.
This commit is contained in:
Marcel Moolenaar 2015-08-07 17:22:37 +00:00
parent ad30bc5aec
commit de93252622

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@ -24,7 +24,7 @@
.\"
.\" $FreeBSD$
.\"
.Dd February 22, 2015
.Dd August 7, 2015
.Dt MKIMG 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
@ -141,7 +141,7 @@ utility will create images that are identical.
.Pp
A set of long options exist to query about the
.Nm
utilty itself.
utility itself.
Options in this set should be given by themselves because the
.Nm
utility exits immediately after providing the requested information.
@ -165,6 +165,85 @@ run the
.Nm
utility without any arguments.
This will print a usage message with all the necessary details.
.Sh DISK FORMATS
The
.Nm
utility supports a number of output file formats.
A short description of these is given below.
.Ss QCOW and QCOW2
QCOW stands for "QEMU Copy On Write".
It's a sparse file format akin to VHD and VMDK and QCOW represents the
first version.
QCOW2 represents version 2 of the file format.
Version 2 is not backward compatible with version 1 and adds support for
snapshots among other things.
The QCOW file formats are natively supported by QEMU and Xen.
To write QCOW, specify
.Fl f Ar qcow
on the command line.
To write version 2 QCOW, specify
.Fl f Ar qcow2
on the command line.
The preferred file extension is ".qcow" iand ".qcow2" for QCOW and QCOW2
(resp.), but ".qcow" is sometimes used for version 2 files as well.
.Ss RAW file format
This file format is a sector by sector representation of an actual disk.
There is no extra information that describes or relates to the format
itself. The size of the file is the size of the (virtual) disk.
This file format is suitable for being copyied onto a disk with utilities
like
.Nm dd .
To write a raw disk file, either omit the
.Fl f
option, or specify
.Fl f Ar raw
on the command line.
The preferred file extension is one of ".img" or ".raw", but there's no
real convention for it.
.Ss Dynamic VHD and Fixed VHD
Microsoft's "Virtual Hard Disk" file formats.
The dynamic format is a sparse format akin to QCOW and VMDK.
The fixed format is effectively a raw format with a footer appended to the
file and as such it's often indistinguishable from the raw format.
The fixed file format has been added to support Microsoft's Azure platform
and due to inconsistencies in interpretation of the footer is not compatible
with utilities like
.Nm qemu
when it is specifically instructed to interpreted the file as a VHD file.
By default
.Nm qemu
will treat the file as a raw disk file, which mostly works fine.
To have
.Nm
create a dynamic VHD file, specify
.Fl f Ar vhd
on the command line.
To create a fixed VHD file for use by Azure, specify
.Fl f Ar vhdf
on the command line.
The preferred file extension is ".vhd".
.Ss VMDK
VMware's "Virtual Machine Disk" file format.
It's a sparse file format akin to QCOW and VHD and supported by many
virtualization solutions.
To create a VMDK file, specify
.Fl f Ar vmdk
on the command line.
The preferred file extension is ".vmdk".
.Pp
Not all virtualization solutions support all file formats, but often those
virtualization environments have utilities to convert from one format to
another.
Note however that conversion may require that the virtual disk size is
changed to match the constraints of the output format and this may invalidate
the contents of the disk image.
For example, the GUID Partition Table (GPT) scheme has a header in the last
sector on the disk.
When changing the disk size, the GPT must be changed so that the last header
is moved accordingly.
This is typically not part of the conversion process.
If possible, use an output format specifically for the environment in which
the file is intended to be used.
.Sh ENVIRONMENT
.Bl -tag -width "TMPDIR" -compact
.It Ev TMPDIR
@ -235,6 +314,7 @@ utility supports assigning labels to the partitions specified.
In the following example the file system partition is labeled as 'backup':
.Dl % mkimg -s gpt -p freebsd-ufs/backup:=file-system.ufs -o gpt.img
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr dd 1 ,
.Xr gpart 8 ,
.Xr makefs 8 ,
.Xr mdconfig 8 ,