Deprecated features¶
In general features are intended to be supported indefinitely once introduced into QEMU. In the event that a feature needs to be removed, it will be listed in this section. The feature will remain functional for the release in which it was deprecated and one further release. After these two releases, the feature is liable to be removed. Deprecated features may also generate warnings on the console when QEMU starts up, or if activated via a monitor command, however, this is not a mandatory requirement.
Prior to the 2.10.0 release there was no official policy on how long features would be deprecated prior to their removal, nor any documented list of which features were deprecated. Thus any features deprecated prior to 2.10.0 will be treated as if they were first deprecated in the 2.10.0 release.
What follows is a list of all features currently marked as deprecated.
System emulator command line arguments¶
QEMU_AUDIO_ environment variables and -audio-help (since 4.0)¶
The -audiodev argument is now the preferred way to specify audio
backend settings instead of environment variables. To ease migration to
the new format, the -audiodev-help option can be used to convert
the current values of the environment variables to -audiodev options.
Creating sound card devices and vnc without audiodev= property (since 4.2)¶
When not using the deprecated legacy audio config, each sound card
should specify an audiodev= property. Additionally, when using
vnc, you should specify an audiodev= property if you plan to
transmit audio through the VNC protocol.
Creating sound card devices using -soundhw (since 5.1)¶
Sound card devices should be created using -device instead. The
names are the same for most devices. The exceptions are hda which
needs two devices (-device intel-hda -device hda-duplex) and
pcspk which can be activated using -machine
pcspk-audiodev=<name>.
-chardev backend aliases tty and parport (since 6.0)¶
tty and parport are aliases that will be removed. Instead, the
actual backend names serial and parallel should be used.
Short-form boolean options (since 6.0)¶
Boolean options such as share=on/share=off could be written
in short form as share and noshare. This is now deprecated
and will cause a warning.
delay option for socket character devices (since 6.0)¶
The replacement for the nodelay short-form boolean option is nodelay=on
rather than delay=off.
--enable-fips (since 6.0)¶
This option restricts usage of certain cryptographic algorithms when the host is operating in FIPS mode.
If FIPS compliance is required, QEMU should be built with the libgcrypt
library enabled as a cryptography provider.
Neither the nettle library, or the built-in cryptography provider are
supported on FIPS enabled hosts.
-writeconfig (since 6.0)¶
The -writeconfig option is not able to serialize the entire contents
of the QEMU command line. It is thus considered a failed experiment
and deprecated, with no current replacement.
Userspace local APIC with KVM (x86, since 6.0)¶
Using -M kernel-irqchip=off with x86 machine types that include a local
APIC is deprecated. The split setting is supported, as is using
-M kernel-irqchip=off with the ISA PC machine type.
hexadecimal sizes with scaling multipliers (since 6.0)¶
Input parameters that take a size value should only use a size suffix (such as ‘k’ or ‘M’) when the base is written in decimal, and not when the value is hexadecimal. That is, ‘0x20M’ is deprecated, and should be written either as ‘32M’ or as ‘0x2000000’.
-spice password=string (since 6.0)¶
This option is insecure because the SPICE password remains visible in
the process listing. This is replaced by the new password-secret
option which lets the password be securely provided on the command
line using a secret object instance.
opened property of rng-* objects (since 6.0)¶
The only effect of specifying opened=on in the command line or QMP
object-add is that the device is opened immediately, possibly before all
other options have been processed. This will either have no effect (if
opened was the last option) or cause errors. The property is therefore
useless and should not be specified.
loaded property of secret and secret_keyring objects (since 6.0)¶
The only effect of specifying loaded=on in the command line or QMP
object-add is that the secret is loaded immediately, possibly before all
other options have been processed. This will either have no effect (if
loaded was the last option) or cause options to be effectively ignored as
if they were not given. The property is therefore useless and should not be
specified.
-display sdl,window_close=... (since 6.1)¶
Use -display sdl,window-close=... instead (i.e. with a minus instead of
an underscore between “window” and “close”).
-no-quit (since 6.1)¶
The -no-quit is a synonym for -display ...,window-close=off which
should be used instead.
-alt-grab and -display sdl,alt_grab=on (since 6.2)¶
Use -display sdl,grab-mod=lshift-lctrl-lalt instead.
-ctrl-grab and -display sdl,ctrl_grab=on (since 6.2)¶
Use -display sdl,grab-mod=rctrl instead.
-sdl (since 6.2)¶
Use -display sdl instead.
-curses (since 6.2)¶
Use -display curses instead.
-watchdog (since 6.2)¶
Use -device instead.
-smp (“parameter=0” SMP configurations) (since 6.2)¶
Specified CPU topology parameters must be greater than zero.
In the SMP configuration, users should either provide a CPU topology parameter with a reasonable value (greater than zero) or just omit it and QEMU will compute the missing value.
However, historically it was implicitly allowed for users to provide a parameter with zero value, which is meaningless and could also possibly cause unexpected results in the -smp parsing. So support for this kind of configurations (e.g. -smp 8,sockets=0) is deprecated since 6.2 and will be removed in the near future, users have to ensure that all the topology members described with -smp are greater than zero.
Plugin argument passing through arg=<string> (since 6.1)¶
Passing TCG plugins arguments through arg= is redundant is makes the
command-line less readable, especially when the argument itself consist of a
name and a value, e.g. -plugin plugin_name,arg="arg_name=arg_value".
Therefore, the usage of arg is redundant. Single-word arguments are treated
as short-form boolean values, and passed to plugins as arg_name=on.
However, short-form booleans are deprecated and full explicit arg_name=on
form is preferred.
-drive if=none for the sifive_u OTP device (since 6.2)¶
Using -drive if=none to configure the OTP device of the sifive_u
RISC-V machine is deprecated. Use -drive if=pflash instead.
QEMU Machine Protocol (QMP) commands¶
blockdev-open-tray, blockdev-close-tray argument device (since 2.8)¶
Use argument id instead.
eject argument device (since 2.8)¶
Use argument id instead.
blockdev-change-medium argument device (since 2.8)¶
Use argument id instead.
block_set_io_throttle argument device (since 2.8)¶
Use argument id instead.
blockdev-add empty string argument backing (since 2.10)¶
Use argument value null instead.
block-commit arguments base and top (since 3.1)¶
Use arguments base-node and top-node instead.
nbd-server-add and nbd-server-remove (since 5.2)¶
Use the more generic commands block-export-add and block-export-del
instead. As part of this deprecation, where nbd-server-add used a
single bitmap, the new block-export-add uses a list of bitmaps.
query-qmp-schema return value member values (since 6.2)¶
Member values in return value elements with meta-type enum is
deprecated. Use members instead.
drive-backup (since 6.2)¶
Use blockdev-backup in combination with blockdev-add instead.
This change primarily separates the creation/opening process of the backup
target with explicit, separate steps. blockdev-backup uses mostly the
same arguments as drive-backup, except the format and mode
options are removed in favor of using explicit blockdev-create and
blockdev-add calls. See Live Block Device Operations for
details.
Incorrectly typed device_add arguments (since 6.2)¶
Due to shortcomings in the internal implementation of device_add, QEMU
incorrectly accepts certain invalid arguments: Any object or list arguments are
silently ignored. Other argument types are not checked, but an implicit
conversion happens, so that e.g. string values can be assigned to integer
device properties or vice versa.
This is a bug in QEMU that will be fixed in the future so that previously
accepted incorrect commands will return an error. Users should make sure that
all arguments passed to device_add are consistent with the documented
property types.
System accelerators¶
MIPS Trap-and-Emul KVM support (since 6.0)¶
The MIPS Trap-and-Emul KVM host and guest support has been removed
from Linux upstream kernel, declare it deprecated.
System emulator CPUS¶
Icelake-Client CPU Model (since 5.2)¶
Icelake-Client CPU Models are deprecated. Use Icelake-Server CPU
Models instead.
MIPS I7200 CPU Model (since 5.2)¶
The I7200 guest CPU relies on the nanoMIPS ISA, which is deprecated
(the ISA has never been upstreamed to a compiler toolchain). Therefore
this CPU is also deprecated.
QEMU API (QAPI) events¶
MEM_UNPLUG_ERROR (since 6.2)¶
Use the more generic event DEVICE_UNPLUG_GUEST_ERROR instead.
System emulator machines¶
Aspeed swift-bmc machine (since 6.1)¶
This machine is deprecated because we have enough AST2500 based OpenPOWER
machines. It can be easily replaced by the witherspoon-bmc or the
romulus-bmc machines.
Backend options¶
Using non-persistent backing file with pmem=on (since 6.1)¶
This option is used when memory-backend-file is consumed by emulated NVDIMM
device. However enabling memory-backend-file.pmem option, when backing file
is (a) not DAX capable or (b) not on a filesystem that support direct mapping
of persistent memory, is not safe and may lead to data loss or corruption in case
of host crash.
Options are:
- modify VM configuration to set
pmem=offto continue using fake NVDIMM (without persistence guaranties) with backing file on non DAX storage- move backing file to NVDIMM storage and keep
pmem=on(to have NVDIMM with persistence guaranties).
Device options¶
Emulated device options¶
-device virtio-blk,scsi=on|off (since 5.0)¶
The virtio-blk SCSI passthrough feature is a legacy VIRTIO feature. VIRTIO 1.0 and later do not support it because the virtio-scsi device was introduced for full SCSI support. Use virtio-scsi instead when SCSI passthrough is required.
Note this also applies to -device virtio-blk-pci,scsi=on|off, which is an
alias.
-device sga (since 6.2)¶
The sga device loads an option ROM for x86 targets which enables
SeaBIOS to send messages to the serial console. SeaBIOS 1.11.0 onwards
contains native support for this feature and thus use of the option
ROM approach is obsolete. The native SeaBIOS support can be activated
by using -machine graphics=off.
Block device options¶
"backing": "" (since 2.12)¶
In order to prevent QEMU from automatically opening an image’s backing
chain, use "backing": null instead.
rbd keyvalue pair encoded filenames: "" (since 3.1)¶
Options for rbd should be specified according to its runtime options,
like other block drivers. Legacy parsing of keyvalue pair encoded
filenames is useful to open images with the old format for backing files;
These image files should be updated to use the current format.
Example of legacy encoding:
json:{"file.driver":"rbd", "file.filename":"rbd:rbd/name"}
The above, converted to the current supported format:
json:{"file.driver":"rbd", "file.pool":"rbd", "file.image":"name"}
linux-user mode CPUs¶
ppc64abi32 CPUs (since 5.2)¶
The ppc64abi32 architecture has a number of issues which regularly
trip up our CI testing and is suspected to be quite broken. For that
reason the maintainers strongly suspect no one actually uses it.
MIPS I7200 CPU (since 5.2)¶
The I7200 guest CPU relies on the nanoMIPS ISA, which is deprecated
(the ISA has never been upstreamed to a compiler toolchain). Therefore
this CPU is also deprecated.
Backwards compatibility¶
Runnability guarantee of CPU models (since 4.1)¶
Previous versions of QEMU never changed existing CPU models in ways that introduced additional host software or hardware requirements to the VM. This allowed management software to safely change the machine type of an existing VM without introducing new requirements (“runnability guarantee”). This prevented CPU models from being updated to include CPU vulnerability mitigations, leaving guests vulnerable in the default configuration.
The CPU model runnability guarantee won’t apply anymore to
existing CPU models. Management software that needs runnability
guarantees must resolve the CPU model aliases using the
alias-of field returned by the query-cpu-definitions QMP
command.
While those guarantees are kept, the return value of
query-cpu-definitions will have existing CPU model aliases
point to a version that doesn’t break runnability guarantees
(specifically, version 1 of those CPU models). In future QEMU
versions, aliases will point to newer CPU model versions
depending on the machine type, so management software must
resolve CPU model aliases before starting a virtual machine.