NAME¶

nbdkit-data-plugin - nbdkit plugin for serving data from the command line

SYNOPSIS¶

 nbdkit data [data=]'0 1 2 3 @0x1fe 0x55 0xaa'
             [size=SIZE] [allocator=sparse|...]
 nbdkit data base64='aGVsbG8gbmJka2l0IHVzZXI='
             [size=SIZE] [allocator=sparse|...]
 nbdkit data raw='binary_data'
             [size=SIZE] [allocator=sparse|...]

DESCRIPTION¶

"nbdkit-data-plugin" is a plugin for nbdkit(1) which serves a small amount of data specified directly on the command line. The plugin gets its name from the "data:" URI scheme used by web browsers. This is mainly useful for testing NBD clients.

You can serve data read-only using the -r flag, or read-write. Any writes are thrown away when nbdkit exits.

Most operating systems have command line size limits which are quite a lot smaller than any desirable disk image, so specifying a large, fully populated disk image on the command line would not be possible. However you can specify a small amount of data at the beginning of the image, possibly followed by zeroes (using the "size" parameter to pad the image to the full size), or use the "data" parameter creatively to make mostly sparse disk images.

The "size" parameter can specify any virtual size up to the maximum supported by nbdkit (2⁶³-1 bytes).

EXAMPLES¶

 nbdkit data ' ( 0x55 0xAA )*2048 '
 nbdkit data ' ( "Hello" )*2000 ' size=8192

 nbdkit data '
   @0x1b8 178 190 207 221 0 0 0 0 2 0 131 32 32 0 1 0 0 0 255 7
   @0x1fe 85 170
   ' size=1M

 $ rm -f disk
 $ truncate -s 1M disk
 $ echo start=1 | sfdisk disk
 Device Boot Start   End Sectors    Size Id Type
 disk1           1  2047    2047 1023.5K 83 Linux
 $ ./disk2data.pl disk

 nbdkit data ' <file1 @^512 <file2 @^512 <file3 @^512 '

 nbdkit data ' </dev/urandom[:512]*16 '

 nbdkit data base64=MTIz size=1M

 $ nbdkit data raw='Hello, world!' --run 'nbdcopy "$uri" - | cat'
 Hello, world!

PARAMETERS¶

Exactly one of the "data", "base64" or "raw" parameters must be supplied.

[data=]DATA

Specify the disk data using a simple compact format. See "DATA FORMAT" below.

"data=" is a magic config key and may be omitted in most cases. See "Magic parameters" in nbdkit(1).

base64=BASE64

The "base64" parameter can be used to supply binary data encoded in base64 on the command line.

This is only supported if nbdkit was compiled with GnuTLS ≥ 3.6.0. You can find out by checking if:

 $ nbdkit data --dump-plugin
    

contains:

 data_base64=yes
    

raw=BINARY

The "raw" parameter can be used to supply raw binary data directly on the command line.

It is usually quite difficult to do this unless you are running nbdkit from another program (see nbdkit-captive(1)). One particular problem is that the data must not contain zero bytes (ie. "\0") since those will be processed in C to mean the end of the string. In almost all cases it is better to use base64 encoding or the custom "data" format.

size=SIZE

The data is truncated or extended to the size specified.

This parameter is optional: If omitted the size is defined by the size of the "data", "raw" or "base64" parameter.

allocator=sparse

allocator=malloc[,mlock=true]

allocator=zstd

(nbdkit ≥ 1.22)

Select the backend allocation strategy. See "ALLOCATORS" in nbdkit-memory-plugin(1). The default is sparse.

DATA FORMAT¶

The "data" parameter lets you specify small disk images in a simple, compact format. It is a string containing a list of bytes which are written into the disk image sequentially. You can move the virtual offset where bytes are written using @offset.

For example:

 nbdkit data '0 1 2 3 @0x1fe 0x55 0xaa'

creates a 0x200 = 512 byte (1 sector) image containing the four bytes "0 1 2 3" at the start, and the two bytes "0x55 0xaa" at the end of the sector, with the remaining 506 bytes in the middle being all zeroes. In this example the size (512 bytes) is implied by the data. But you could additionally use the "size" parameter to either truncate or extend (with zeroes) the disk image.

Whitespace between fields in the string is ignored.

Fields in the string can be:

@OFFSET

Moves the current offset to "OFFSET". The offset may be specified as either decimal, octal (prefixed by 0) or hexadecimal (prefixed by "0x"). Offset @0 is the first byte of the disk.

@+N

@-N

(nbdkit ≥ 1.22)

Add or subtract "N" from the current offset.

@^ALIGNMENT

(nbdkit ≥ 1.22)

If the current offset is not a multiple of "ALIGNMENT" then the offset is moved forward to the next multiple. The next byte written will be aligned to "ALIGNMENT".

BYTE

Write "BYTE" at the current offset and advance the offset by 1 byte. The byte may be specified as either decimal, octal (prefixed by 0) or hexadecimal (prefixed by "0x"). To add repeated bytes use "BYTE*N"

<FILE

(nbdkit ≥ 1.8)

Read the contents of binary FILE into the disk image at the current offset. The offset is incremented by the size of the file. The filename can be a relative or absolute path, but cannot contain whitespace in the name.

<(SCRIPT)

(nbdkit ≥ 1.24, not Windows)

Substitute the output of the shell script or external program as a binary blob and advance the offset by the length in bytes of the output. You can use this to create more complex test patterns. For example this produces a 32K disk image with an incrementing test pattern in groups of 4 bytes:

 nbdkit data ' <( i=0
                  while :; do
                      printf "%04d" $((i++))
                  done )[:32768] '
    

The script may contain "(" and ")" characters, but they must be in matching pairs. A script can produce a finite amount of output; or (as in the example) an infinite amount which must be truncated using the "[:len]" slice operator.

Scripts must be idempotent, producing the same output each time they are run. This is because optimizations might change the order of evaluation or number of times the script is called and you could get different output in a future version of nbdkit.

"STRING"

(nbdkit ≥ 1.22)

Write a string into the image at the current offset and advance the offset by the length of the string. To include special characters in the string you can escape them in the same way as C strings (eg. a double quote character within the string should be written "\""). Be careful with shell quoting around the whole data parameter.

( ... )

(nbdkit ≥ 1.24)

Group a set of expressions into a single expression.

"( ... )" recursively creates a new data parser so any of the above operators can appear inside, including nested "( ... )". Note that offsets and alignments within the subpattern are relative to the start of the subpattern, not relative to the final disk image.

expression * N

(nbdkit ≥ 1.24)

Repeat the expression "N" times. The offset is incremented by the length of the expression × N. For example to create a repeating pattern of 0x55, 0xAA for 512 (2×256) bytes do:

 nbdkit data '( 0x55 0xAA ) * 256'
    

expression [N:M]

(nbdkit ≥ 1.24)

Take a slice of the expression. Slices are [start:end+1] where start and end are the first and last byte offsets of the expression desired. Either or both may be omitted. [:len] means to take the first len bytes. [start:] means to take bytes from offset start to the end of the expression.

expression -> \NAME

\NAME

(nbdkit ≥ 1.24)

Assign an expression to a name which can be used later. Names can be used in the current scope (or any scopes nested within the current scope), but disappear at the end of the current scope. Names start with a backslash character followed by one or more alphanumeric, dash and underscore. For example this makes two identical sectors both containing a boot signature at the end:

 nbdkit data ' ( 0x55 0xAA ) -> \boot-signature
               ( @0x1fe \boot-signature ) -> \sector
               \sector \sector '
    

$VAR

(nbdkit ≥ 1.24)

Substitute command line parameters or environment variables. The variable is written in the same language as the "data" parameter, and when substituted it creates a nested scope like "( ... )" expressions. These are all equivalent:

 nbdkit data '$pattern*16' pattern='0x55 0xAA'
 export pattern='0x55 0xAA'
 nbdkit data '$pattern*16'
 nbdkit data '( 0x55 0xAA )*16'
    

# COMMENT

(nbdkit ≥ 1.24)

"#" begins a comment stretching to the end of the current line.

FILES¶

$plugindir/nbdkit-data-plugin.so

The plugin.

Use "nbdkit --dump-config" to find the location of $plugindir.

VERSION¶

"nbdkit-data-plugin" first appeared in nbdkit 1.6.

SEE ALSO¶

nbdkit(1), nbdkit-captive(1), nbdkit-plugin(3), nbdkit-info-plugin(1), nbdkit-memory-plugin(1), nbdkit-null-plugin(1), nbdkit-partitioning-plugin(1), nbdkit-pattern-plugin(1), nbdkit-random-plugin(1), nbdkit-sparse-random-plugin(1), nbdkit-tmpdisk-plugin(1), nbdkit-zero-plugin(1), https://github.com/libguestfs/nbdkit/blob/master/plugins/data/disk2data.pl, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64.

AUTHORS¶

Richard W.M. Jones

COPYRIGHT¶

Copyright (C) 2018-2020 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.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY RED HAT AND CONTRIBUTORS ''AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL RED HAT OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.