Outdated floppy device

[pevogam]

It seems that some of the newest Qemu versions (here tested 6.1.0) have problem installing Windows machines or in general running unattended install tests with floppy drives:

[stdlog] 2022-06-18 12:43:01,247 client           L0606 INFO | [qemu output] qemu-system-x86_64: can't apply global isa-fdc.driveA=drive_fl: Property 'isa-fdc.driveA' not found

Background might be the following deprecation:

https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg68098.html

Looking at the Avocado VT source code, I can find these floppy bus classes (QFloppyBus and and even older QOldFloppyBus):

class QFloppyBus(QDenseBus):

    """
    Floppy bus (-global isa-fdc.drive?=$drive)
    """

So it might be that I am missing something but can we use the new -device floppy,unit=1,drive=... in some way instead of the old -global isa-fdc.driveA=...?

@PaulYuuu @chunfuwen @luckyh What do you think?

[PaulYuuu]

@pevogam, good point. Actually I never test floppy devices, but if it was introduced very early, I think we can re-design this part directly. Replace it to use QPCIBus should not a big task.

[pevogam]

@pevogam, good point. Actually I never test floppy devices, but if it was introduced very early, I think we can re-design this part directly. Replace it to use QPCIBus should not a big task.

I guess what is a bit more elaborate is to keep backward compatibility with older Qemu versions too, not sure what is the current Qemu version that most Avocado VT members are using.

[luckyh]

I guess what is a bit more elaborate is to keep backward compatibility with older Qemu versions too, not sure what is the current Qemu version that most Avocado VT members are using.

It seems to be easy to support both together with the capabilities utility. Let me take the command line expression of virtual block devices as an example, legacy qemu would use -drive to represent image files while modern qemu would use -blockdev instead, therefore we had the following code snippets to probe the capability and choose the most appropriate expression to format the command line. I think we can apply a similar flow for floppy devices as well.

avocado-vt/virttest/qemu_devices/qcontainer.py

Lines 278 to 283 in 8d98e23

	def _probe_capabilities(self):
	""" Probe capabilities. """
	# -blockdev
	if (self.has_option('blockdev') and
	self.__qemu_ver in VersionInterval(self.BLOCKDEV_VERSION_SCOPE)):
	self.caps.set_flag(Flags.BLOCKDEV)

avocado-vt/virttest/qemu_devices/qcontainer.py

Lines 2076 to 2144 in 8d98e23

	if Flags.BLOCKDEV in self.caps:
	protocol_cls = qdevices.QBlockdevProtocolFile
	if not filename:
	protocol_cls = qdevices.QBlockdevProtocolNullCo
	elif filename.startswith('iscsi:'):
	protocol_cls = qdevices.QBlockdevProtocolISCSI
	elif filename.startswith('rbd:'):
	protocol_cls = qdevices.QBlockdevProtocolRBD
	elif filename.startswith('gluster'):
	protocol_cls = qdevices.QBlockdevProtocolGluster
	elif re.match(r'nbd(\+\w+)?://', filename):
	protocol_cls = qdevices.QBlockdevProtocolNBD
	elif filename.startswith('nvme:'):
	protocol_cls = qdevices.QBlockdevProtocolNVMe
	elif filename.startswith('ssh:'):
	protocol_cls = qdevices.QBlockdevProtocolSSH
	elif filename.startswith('https:'):
	protocol_cls = qdevices.QBlockdevProtocolHTTPS
	elif filename.startswith('http:'):
	protocol_cls = qdevices.QBlockdevProtocolHTTP
	elif filename.startswith('ftps:'):
	protocol_cls = qdevices.QBlockdevProtocolFTPS
	elif filename.startswith('ftp:'):
	protocol_cls = qdevices.QBlockdevProtocolFTP
	elif fmt in ('scsi-generic', 'scsi-block'):
	protocol_cls = qdevices.QBlockdevProtocolHostDevice
	elif blkdebug is not None:
	protocol_cls = qdevices.QBlockdevProtocolBlkdebug
	if imgfmt == 'qcow2':
	format_cls = qdevices.QBlockdevFormatQcow2
	elif imgfmt == 'raw' or media == 'cdrom':
	format_cls = qdevices.QBlockdevFormatRaw
	elif imgfmt == 'luks':
	format_cls = qdevices.QBlockdevFormatLuks
	elif imgfmt == 'nvme':
	format_cls = qdevices.QBlockdevFormatRaw
	elif imgfmt is None:
	# use RAW type as the default
	format_cls = qdevices.QBlockdevFormatRaw
	format_node = format_cls(name)
	protocol_node = protocol_cls(name)
	format_node.add_child_node(protocol_node)
	devices.append(protocol_node)
	devices.append(format_node)
	# Add filter node
	if image_copy_on_read in ("yes", "on", "true"):
	filter_node = qdevices.QBlockdevFilterCOR(name)
	filter_node.add_child_node(format_node)
	devices.append(filter_node)
	filter_node.set_param('file', format_node.get_qid())
	if image_throttle_group:
	filter_node = qdevices.QBlockdevFilterThrottle(name,
	image_throttle_group)
	filter_node.add_child_node(format_node)
	devices.append(filter_node)
	filter_node.set_param('file', format_node.get_qid())
	format_node.set_param('file', protocol_node.get_qid())
	else:
	if self.has_hmp_cmd('__com.redhat_drive_add') and use_device:
	devices.append(qdevices.QRHDrive(name))
	elif self.has_hmp_cmd('drive_add') and use_device:
	devices.append(qdevices.QHPDrive(name))
	elif self.has_option("device"):
	devices.append(qdevices.QDrive(name, use_device))
	else: # very old qemu without 'addr' support
	devices.append(qdevices.QOldDrive(name, use_device))

[pevogam]

Closing via #3719.