Settings > Clone was a horizontal form with unlabelled checkboxes. The
owner chose this layout from three rendered options: the clone's name
on top, a "Network" card with a new MAC address per NIC, a "Storage"
card with a new volume name per disk, then the optional title and
description and a footer with Clone.
Codex reviewed cloning end to end; these are fixed:
- Every NIC of the clone gets a new random MAC when the form opens.
Only the first did, so a VM with two NICs gave its clone the second
NIC's MAC. Guess MAC is offered for the first NIC only: a name's DHCP
host entry holds one address.
- A VM without a NIC can be cloned: the first NIC's MAC was required.
- The disk name script uses the persistent disks, as the form does; a
disk added pending the next start kept the source's volume name.
- A running or paused VM is not cloned while a copied disk changes at
the next start: the backup copies the running disk, so the clone
would get the old contents under the new definition.
- A derived volume name that does not start with the source's name now
starts with the clone's name and the disk's device, so a second clone
or a second disk does not take the same name.
- Guess for the clone name says when the DHCP file has no free name; it
stopped with a script error.
- The qcow2 metadata preallocation box shows only for a shut-off VM: a
live clone's backup ignores it.
Other users no longer get hidden MAC and disk inputs or the scripts that
filled them: the server derives those values and ignored the posted ones.
A quiesced snapshot and a live clone freeze the guest's file systems
through libvirt, which asks the agent without a timeout: with the agent
hung, the job waited, holding the VM, with no end.
The agent must now first answer a guest-ping within 10 s; a frozen or
dead agent fails the job in seconds, before anything is frozen. The
freeze itself stays libvirt's, without a timeout: a timed freeze was
tried and left the guest frozen, since the freeze still ran in the
guest when the agent came back, after its thaw had failed.
libvirt's backup copies the disks of a running or paused VM from one
instant into new volumes while it keeps running; the clone is defined
shut off as before. The VM is held for the copy, the copy can be
cancelled, and recovery reads the job's records and libvirt.
The clone's definition is one method for both paths; wvmInstance can check,
start, follow, read and abort a push backup of a VM's disks into new
volumes, and freeze/thaw the guest.
