jvrao wrote: > Alexander Graf wrote: >> On 12.04.2010, at 13:58, Jamie Lokier wrote: >> >>> Mohammed Gamal wrote: >>>> On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 12:29 AM, Jamie Lokier <ja...@shareable.org> wrote: >>>>> Javier Guerra Giraldez wrote: >>>>>> On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 7:42 AM, Mohammed Gamal <m.gamal...@gmail.com> >>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>> On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 2:12 PM, Jamie Lokier <ja...@shareable.org> >>>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>>> To throw a spanner in, the most widely supported filesystem across >>>>>>>> operating systems is probably NFS, version 2 :-) >>>>>>> Remember that Windows usage on a VM is not some rare use case, and >>>>>>> it'd be a little bit of a pain from a user's perspective to have to >>>>>>> install a third party NFS client for every VM they use. Having >>>>>>> something supported on the VM out of the box is a better option IMO. >>>>>> i don't think virtio-CIFS has any more support out of the box (on any >>>>>> system) than virtio-9P. >>>>> It doesn't, but at least network-CIFS tends to work ok and is the >>>>> method of choice for Windows VMs - when you can setup Samba on the >>>>> host (which as previously noted you cannot always do non-disruptively >>>>> with current Sambas). >>>>> >>>>> -- Jamie >>>>> >>>> I think having support for both 9p and CIFS would be the best option. >>>> In that case the user will have the option to use either one, >>>> depending on how their guests support these filesystems. In that case >>>> I'd prefer to work on CIFS support while the 9p effort can still go >>>> on. I don't think both efforts are mutually exclusive. >>>> >>>> What do the rest of you guys think? >>> I only noted NFS because most old OSes do not support CIFS or 9P - >>> especially all the old unixes. >>> >>> I don't think old versions of MS-DOS and Windows (95, 98, ME, Nt4?) >>> even support current CIFS. They need extra server settings to work >>> - such as setting passwords on the server to non-encrypted and other quirks. >>> >>> Meanwhile Windows Vista/2008/7 works better with SMB2, not CIFS, to >>> properly see symlinks and hard links. >>> >>> So there is no really nice out of the box file service which works >>> easily with all guest OSes. >>> >>> I'm guessing that out of all the filesystems, CIFS is the most widely >>> supported in recent OSes (released in the last 10 years). But I'm not >>> really sure what the state of CIFS is for non-Windows, non-Linux, >>> non-BSD guests. >> So what? If you want to have direct host fs access, install guest drivers. >> If you can't, set up networking and use CIFS or NFS or whatever. >> >>> I'm not sure why 9P is being pursued. Does anything much support it, >>> or do all OSes except quite recent Linux need a custom driver for 9P? >>> Even Linux only got the first commit in the kernel 5 years ago, so >>> probably it was only about 3 years ago that it will have begun >>> appearing in stable distros, if at all. Filesystem passthrough to >>> Linux guests installed in the last couple of years is a useful >>> feature, and I know that for many people that is their only use of >>> KVM, but compared with CIFS' broad support it seems like quite a >>> narrow goal. >> The goal is to have something simple and fast. We can fine-tune 9P to align >> with the Linux VFS structures, making it really little overhead (and little >> headache too). For Windows guests, nothing prevents us to expose yet another >> 9P flavor. That again would be aligned well with Windows's VFS and be slim >> and fast there. >> >> The biggest problem I see with CIFS is that it's a huge beast. There are a >> lot of corner cases where it just doesn't fit in. See my previous mail for >> more details. >> > As Alex mentioned, 9P is chosen for its mere simplicity and easy adaptability. > NFS and CIFS does not give that flexibility. As we mentioned in the patch > series, we are > already seeing better numbers with 9P. Looking ahead 9P can embed KVM/QEMU > knowledge > to share physical resources like memory/cache between the host and the guest. > > I think looking into the windows side of 9P client would be great option too. > The current patch on the mailing list supports .U (unix) protocol and will be > introducing > .L (Linux) variant as we move forward.
Hi Mohammed, Please let us know once you decide on where your interest lies. Will be glad to have you on VirtFS (9P) though. :) - JV > > - JV > > >> Alex >> >> >> > > > >