qemu-img create corrupts the qcow2 if the file already exists When creating a disk using qemu-img create command, if the destination path of the qcow2 file already exists, it will show the error saying that it cannot get a lock so it exits with exit status 1 but it will corrupt the qcow2 file anyway. Steps to reproduce: 1. Have a guest running with a root (vda) and a second device (vdc). In my case is a clean Ubuntu 16.04 image with kernel 4.4.0-190-generic x86_64 vdc disk is called testadddisk-3.qcow2 2. vdc is an xfs over lvm. pvcreacte /dev/vdc vgcreate myVg /dev/vdc lvcreate -l+100%FREE -n myLv myVg mkfs.xfs /dev/mapper/myVg-myLv mount /dev/mapper/myVg-myLv /mnt 3. Create disk IO on that device in the guest. while true ; do dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/testfile bs=1024 count=1000 ; sleep 1; done 4. Execute the command to create a new device but use the same name of the device attached: sudo qemu-img create -f qcow2 testadddisk-3.qcow2 20G The output of the command is this: Formatting 'testadddisk-3.qcow2', fmt=qcow2 size=21474836480 cluster_size=65536 lazy_refcounts=off refcount_bits=16 qemu-img: testadddisk-3.qcow2: Failed to get "write" lock Is another process using the image? The write continues in the guest but when it is shutdown, when it is powered on again you get this: error: Failed to start domain testadddisk error: internal error: process exited while connecting to monitor: 2020-10-27T22:00:51.628374Z qemu-system-x86_64: -drive file=/var/lib/vmImages/testadddisk-3.qcow2,format=qcow2,if=none,id=drive-virtio-disk2: Image is not in qcow2 format I run the qemu-img create command with an strace and I believe that first it tries to open the file in write mode, then does a truncate on it and after that says it cannot get a lock. The output is in the file attached. As well as the guest xml just in case. The host: Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS 4.15.0-112-generic x86_64 qemu packages installed: ii qemu-block-extra:amd64 1:2.11+dfsg-1ubuntu7.32 amd64 extra block backend modules for qemu-system and qemu-utils ii qemu-kvm 1:2.11+dfsg-1ubuntu7.31 amd64 QEMU Full virtualization on x86 hardware ii qemu-system-common 1:2.11+dfsg-1ubuntu7.32 amd64 QEMU full system emulation binaries (common files) ii qemu-system-x86 1:2.11+dfsg-1ubuntu7.31 amd64 QEMU full system emulation binaries (x86) ii qemu-utils 1:2.11+dfsg-1ubuntu7.32 amd64 QEMU utilities The QEMU project is currently moving its bug tracking to another system. For this we need to know which bugs are still valid and which could be closed already. Thus we are setting the bug state to "Incomplete" now. If the bug has already been fixed in the latest upstream version of QEMU, then please close this ticket as "Fix released". If it is not fixed yet and you think that this bug report here is still valid, then you have two options: 1) If you already have an account on gitlab.com, please open a new ticket for this problem in our new tracker here: https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues and then close this ticket here on Launchpad (or let it expire auto- matically after 60 days). Please mention the URL of this bug ticket on Launchpad in the new ticket on GitLab. 2) If you don't have an account on gitlab.com and don't intend to get one, but still would like to keep this ticket opened, then please switch the state back to "New" or "Confirmed" within the next 60 days (other- wise it will get closed as "Expired"). We will then eventually migrate the ticket automatically to the new system (but you won't be the reporter of the bug in the new system and thus you won't get notified on changes anymore). Thank you and sorry for the inconvenience. [Expired for QEMU because there has been no activity for 60 days.]