NAME¶

nbdkit-captive - run nbdkit under another process and have it reliably cleaned up

SYNOPSIS¶

 nbdkit PLUGIN [...] --run "CMD ARGS ..."
 nbdkit --exit-with-parent PLUGIN [...]

DESCRIPTION¶

You can run nbdkit under another process and have nbdkit reliably clean up. There are two techniques depending on whether you want nbdkit to start the other process ("CAPTIVE NBDKIT"), or if you want the other process to start nbdkit ("EXIT WITH PARENT").

CAPTIVE NBDKIT¶

You can run nbdkit as a "captive process", using the --run option. This means that nbdkit runs as long as (for example) qemu(1) or guestfish(1) is running. When those exit, nbdkit is killed.

Some examples should make this clear.

To run nbdkit captive under qemu:

 nbdkit file disk.img --run 'qemu -drive file=$nbd,if=virtio'

On the qemu command line, $nbd is substituted automatically with the right NBD path so it can connect to nbdkit. When qemu exits, nbdkit is killed and cleaned up automatically.

Running nbdkit captive under guestfish:

 nbdkit file disk.img --run 'guestfish --format=raw -a $nbd -i'

When guestfish exits, nbdkit is killed.

The following shell variables are available in the --run argument:

$nbd

A URL that refers to the nbdkit port or socket.

Note there is some magic here, since qemu and guestfish URLs have a different format, so nbdkit tries to guess which you are running. If the magic doesn't work, try using the variables below instead.

$port

If ≠ "", the port number that nbdkit is listening on.

$unixsocket

If ≠ "", the Unix domain socket that nbdkit is listening on.

--run implies --foreground. It is not possible, and probably not desirable, to have nbdkit fork into the background when using --run.

Even when running captive, nbdkit still listens on the regular TCP/IP port, unless you specify the -p/-U options. If you want a truly private captive nbdkit, then you should create a private random Unix socket, like this:

 nbdkit -U - plugin [args] --run '...'

 nbdkit -U - example1 --run 'qemu-img convert $nbd disk.img'

 nbdkit -U - tar tar=data.tar file=disk.img \
   --run 'qemu-img convert -n disk.img $nbd'

EXIT WITH PARENT¶

The --exit-with-parent option is almost the opposite of "CAPTIVE NBDKIT" described in the previous section.

Running nbdkit with this option, for example from a script:

 nbdkit --exit-with-parent plugin ... &

means that nbdkit will exit automatically if the parent program exits for any reason. This can be used to avoid complicated cleanups or orphaned nbdkit processes.

--exit-with-parent is incompatible with forking into the background (because when we fork into the background we lose track of the parent process). Therefore -f / --foreground is implied.

This is currently implemented using a non-POSIX feature available in Linux ≥ 2.1.57 and FreeBSD ≥ 11.2, so it won't work on other operating systems (patches welcome to make it work).

If the parent application is multithreaded, then (in the Linux implementation) if the parent thread exits, that will cause nbdkit to exit. Thus in multithreaded applications you usually want to run "nbdkit --exit-with-parent" only from the main thread (unless you actually want nbdkit to exit with the thread, but that may not work reliably on all operating systems).

SEE ALSO¶

nbdkit(1), prctl(2) (on Linux), procctl(2) (on FreeBSD).

AUTHORS¶

Eric Blake

Richard W.M. Jones

Pino Toscano

COPYRIGHT¶

Copyright (C) 2013-2018 Red Hat Inc.

LICENSE¶

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

• Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
• Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
• Neither the name of Red Hat nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

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