docs: Document how to stream to an intermediate layer

Signed-off-by: Alberto Garcia <berto@igalia.com>
Reviewed-by: Kevin Wolf <kwolf@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Kevin Wolf <kwolf@redhat.com>

1 files changed, 25 insertions, 11 deletions

diff --git a/docs/live-block-ops.txt b/docs/live-block-ops.txt
index a257087401..2211d14428 100644
--- a/docs/live-block-ops.txt
+++ b/docs/live-block-ops.txt
@@ -4,15 +4,20 @@ LIVE BLOCK OPERATIONS
 High level description of live block operations. Note these are not
 supported for use with the raw format at the moment.
 
+Note also that this document is incomplete and it currently only
+covers the 'stream' operation. Other operations supported by QEMU such
+as 'commit', 'mirror' and 'backup' are not described here yet. Please
+refer to the qapi/block-core.json file for an overview of those.
+
 Snapshot live merge
 ===================
 
 Given a snapshot chain, described in this document in the following
 format:
 
-[A] -> [B] -> [C] -> [D]
+[A] <- [B] <- [C] <- [D] <- [E]
 
-Where the rightmost object ([D] in the example) described is the current
+Where the rightmost object ([E] in the example) described is the current
 image which the guest OS has write access to. To the left of it is its base
 image, and so on accordingly until the leftmost image, which has no
 base.
@@ -21,11 +26,14 @@ The snapshot live merge operation transforms such a chain into a
 smaller one with fewer elements, such as this transformation relative
 to the first example:
 
-[A] -> [D]
+[A] <- [E]
+
+Data is copied in the right direction with destination being the
+rightmost image, but any other intermediate image can be specified
+instead. In this example data is copied from [C] into [D], so [D] can
+be backed by [B]:
 
-Currently only forward merge with target being the active image is
-supported, that is, data copy is performed in the right direction with
-destination being the rightmost image.
+[A] <- [B] <- [D] <- [E]
 
 The operation is implemented in QEMU through image streaming facilities.
 
@@ -35,14 +43,20 @@ streaming operation completes it raises a QMP event. 'block_stream'
 copies data from the backing file(s) into the active image. When finished,
 it adjusts the backing file pointer.
 
-The 'base' parameter specifies an image which data need not be streamed from.
-This image will be used as the backing file for the active image when the
-operation is finished.
+The 'base' parameter specifies an image which data need not be
+streamed from. This image will be used as the backing file for the
+destination image when the operation is finished.
+
+In the first example above, the command would be:
+
+(qemu) block_stream virtio0 file-A.img
 
-In the example above, the command would be:
+In order to specify a destination image different from the active
+(rightmost) one we can use its node name instead.
 
-(qemu) block_stream virtio0 A
+In the second example above, the command would be:
 
+(qemu) block_stream node-D file-B.img
 
 Live block copy
 ===============