| nbdkit-protocol(1) | NBDKIT | nbdkit-protocol(1) |
nbdkit - which parts of the NBD protocol nbdkit supports
nbdkit [-n|--newstyle] [--mask-handshake MASK] [--no-sr] [-o|--oldstyle]
[...]
This page documents the level of support in nbdkit for various parts of the NBD protocol.
The NBD protocol comes in two incompatible forms that we call "oldstyle" and "newstyle". Unfortunately which protocol you should use depends on the client and cannot be known in advance, nor can it be negotiated from the server side.
nbdkit defaults to the newstyle protocol since nbdkit ≥ 1.3. The newstyle protocol is better in every respect than the oldstyle protocol and you should prefer it if possible. The newstyle protocol also includes an extension where a client may request structured replies for even more capabilities, such as sparse reads or obtaining block status. By default, nbdkit advertises as many features as it can support (in some cases, this can be limited by what callbacks the plugin handles), even if the client does not negotiate to use all advertised features.
Nbdkit also includes some options that are useful mainly when performing integration tests, for proving whether clients have sane fallback behavior when dealing various older servers permitted by the NBD protocol. Use the --no-sr flag to force the newstyle protocol to decline any client request for structured replies. Use the --mask-handshake parameter to mask off particular global features which are advertised during new-style handshake (defaulting to all supported bits set). Clearing bit 0 (the low order bit) limits a client to using just "NBD_OPT_EXPORT_NAME" (and is incompatible with TLS or structured replies); clearing bit 1 causes the handshake to send more padding bytes in response to "NBD_OPT_EXPORT_NAME". Other bits in the mask will only have an effect if the NBD protocol is extended in the future to define other global bits.
Use the -o or --oldstyle flag to force the oldstyle protocol. In this mode, --no-sr and --mask-handshake have no effect.
Client Protocol ------------------------------------------------------------ qemu <= 2.5 without exportname oldstyle qemu <= 2.5 with exportname newstyle qemu >= 2.6 client can talk either protocol qemu >= 2.11 client tries structured replies nbd-client < 3.10 client can talk either protocol nbd-client >= 3.10 newstyle, no structured replies any TLS (encrypted) client newstyle nbdkit nbd plugin client can talk either protocol nbdkit >= 1.13.3 nbd plugin tries structured replies libnbd either protocol, tries structured replies
If you use qemu ≤ 2.5 without the exportname field against a newstyle server, it will give the error:
Server requires an export name
If you use qemu ≤ 2.5 with the exportname field against an oldstyle server, it will give the error:
Server does not support export names
If you use the oldstyle protocol with nbd-client ≥ 3.10, it will give the error:
Error: It looks like you're trying to connect to an oldstyle server.
Port 10809/tcp is reserved by IANA for the NBD protocol, but you can use nbdkit on any port or on Unix domain sockets.
The NBD protocol specification claims that you should always use newstyle when using port 10809, and use oldstyle on all other ports, but this claim is not based on the reality of what NBD servers do, and nbdkit does not require or encourage this.
Versions of nbdkit before 1.16 could advertise a single export name to clients, via a now deprecated side effect of the -e option. In nbdkit 1.15.2, plugins could read the client requested export name using "nbdkit_export_name()" and serve different content. In nbdkit 1.21.22, plugins could implement ".list_exports" to answer "NBD_OPT_LIST" queries.
This protocol optimization avoids sending a useless block of zero bytes during protocol negotiation.
This protocol enhancement allows the server to return errors when negotiating the export name.
This protocol enhancement allows a client to inspect details about the export without actually connecting.
However we don’t expose the capability to send structured replies to plugins yet, nor do we send human-readable error messages using this facility.
In nbdkit ≥ 1.13.9>, the command-line option --no-sr can be used to disable server support for structured replies, for testing client fallbacks.
Only "base:allocation" (ie. querying which parts of an image are sparse) is supported.
Sparse reads (using "NBD_REPLY_TYPE_OFFSET_HOLE" are not directly supported, but a client can use block status to infer which portions of the export do not need to be read.
This protocol extension allows a client to force an all-or-none read when structured replies are in effect. However, the flag is a no-op until we extend the plugin API to allow a fragmented read in the first place.
This protocol extension allows a client to inform the server about intent to access a portion of the export, to allow the server an opportunity to cache things appropriately.
This protocol extension allows a server to advertise that it can rank all zero requests as fast or slow, at which point the client can make fast zero requests which fail immediately with "ENOTSUP" if the request is no faster than a counterpart write would be, while normal zero requests still benefit from compressed network traffic regardless of the time taken.
These protocol extensions allow a client to learn more information about an export during "NBD_OPT_GO". The ".default_export" callback can inform a client of a canonical non-empty name in place of the default export "", and the ".export_description" callback can give a client more details about the export.
nbdkit(1), https://github.com/NetworkBlockDevice/nbd/blob/master/doc/proto.md, https://nbd.sourceforge.io/.
Eric Blake
Richard W.M. Jones
Pino Toscano
Copyright (C) 2013-2020 Red Hat Inc.
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| 2021-01-20 | nbdkit-1.24.1 |