[libvirt] libvir and VDE
Hi all, I am currently looking at looking at virsh to mamange my kvm and qemu VMs, but find that libvir doesn't support VDE networking which I prefer over other networking options. An obvious first step to adding support for VDE networking would be to allow the domxml-from-native subcommand to parse -net vde arguments like: -net vde,vlan=0,group=vde2-net,mode=0770,sock=/var/run/qemu-vde-ctl Apart from that, what else is required to support VDE networks in libvir? Cheers, Erik -- -- Erik de Castro Lopo http://www.mega-nerd.com/ -- libvir-list mailing list libvir-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libvir-list
Re: [libvirt] [Qemu-devel] Re: Libvirt debug API
On 04/23/2010 09:29 PM, Anthony Liguori wrote: Maybe. We'll still have issues. For example, sVirt: if a QMP command names a labeled resource, the non-libvirt user will have no way of knowing how to label it. This is orthogonal to QMP and has to do strictly with how libvirt prepares a resource for qemu. It's not orthogonal. If you allow qmp access behind libvirt's back, it's a problem that you will have. Much better to exact a commitment from libvirt to track all QMP (and command line) capabilities. Instead of adding cleverness to QMP, add APIs to libvirt. Let's step back for a minute because I think we're missing the forest through the trees. We're trying to address a few distinct problems: 1) Allow libvirt users to access features of qemu that are not exposed through libvirt That's an artificial problem. If libvirt exposes all features, you don't need to solve it. 2) Provide a means for non-libvirt users to interact with qemu We have qmp. It doesn't do multiple guest management. I think it's reasonable to have a qemud which does (and also does sVirt and the zillion other things libvirt does) provided we remove them from libvirt (long term). The only problem is that it's a lot of effort. 3) Provide a unified and interoperable view of the world for non-libvirt and libvirt users This problem can be solved by the non-libvirt users adopting libvirt, or the libvirt users dropping libvirt. I don't understand why we need to add interoperability between users who choose an interoperability library and users who don't choose an interoperability library. For (1), we all agree that the best case scenario would be for libvirt to support every qemu feature. I think we can also all agree though that this is not really practical and certainly not practical for developers since there is a development cost associated with libvirt support (to model an API appropriately). All except me, perhaps. We already have two layers of feature modeling: first, we mostly emulate real life, not invent new features. PCI hotplug existed long before qemu had support for it. Second, we do give some thought into how we expose it through QMP. libvirt doesn't have to invent it again, it only has to expose it through its lovely xml and C APIs. The new API proposed addresses (1) by allowing a user to drill down to the QMP context. It's a good solution IMHO and I think we all agree that there's an inherent risk to this that users will have to evaluate on a case-by-case basis. It's a good stop-gap though. Agree. (2) is largely addressed by QMP and a config file. I'd like to see a nice C library, but I think a lot of other folks are happy with JSON support in higher level languages. I agree with them. C is a pretty bad choice for managing qemu (or even, C is a pretty bad choice). (3) is the place where there are still potential challenges. I think at the very least, our goal should be to enable conversion from (2) and (1) to be as easy as possible. That's why I have proposed implementing a C library for the JSON transport because we could plumb that through the new libvirt API. This would allow a user to very quickly port an application from QMP to libvirt. In order to do this, we need the libvirt API to expose a dedicated monitor because we'll need to be able to manipulate events and negotiate features. Most likely any application that talks QMP will hide the protocol behind a function call interface anyway. Beyond simple porting, there's a secondary question of having non-libvirt apps co-exist with libvirt apps. I think it's a good long term goal, but I don't think we should worry too much about it now. libvirt needs to either support all but the most esoteric use cases, or to get out of the way completely. -- Do not meddle in the internals of kernels, for they are subtle and quick to panic. -- libvir-list mailing list libvir-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libvir-list
[libvirt] Question on xm and virsh listing
I'd like to understand the exact mechanism for retrieving the list of guests by xm/xend and virsh/libvirt.In what situations could the output of 'xm list' differ from 'virsh list'?Which of these two is more accurate? I'd appreciate any pointers. Thanks. -- libvir-list mailing list libvir-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libvir-list
Re: [libvirt] Question on xm and virsh listing
AFAIK, virt list shows only running guests. Not sure how xm list behaves, but if it shows offline ( not running ) guests, that's where the difference can be. To achieve the same with virsh use virsh list --all. Also i'd guess that if a xen guest was not create with virsh/virt-manager/virt-install , virsh won't know about it and won't show it in virsh list. - Original Message - I'd like to understand the exact mechanism for retrieving the list of guests by xm/xend and virsh/libvirt.In what situations could the output of 'xm list' differ from 'virsh list'?Which of these two is more accurate? I'd appreciate any pointers. Thanks. -- Nikolai K. Bochev System Administrator -- libvir-list mailing list libvir-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libvir-list
Re: [libvirt] [Qemu-devel] Re: Libvirt debug API
On 04/24/2010 04:46 AM, Avi Kivity wrote: On 04/23/2010 09:29 PM, Anthony Liguori wrote: Maybe. We'll still have issues. For example, sVirt: if a QMP command names a labeled resource, the non-libvirt user will have no way of knowing how to label it. This is orthogonal to QMP and has to do strictly with how libvirt prepares a resource for qemu. It's not orthogonal. If you allow qmp access behind libvirt's back, it's a problem that you will have. My point was, if libvirt is just exposing raw qemu features, then it should be possible for qemu to arbitrate concurrent access. If libvirt implements features on top of qemu, then no other third party will be able to co-exist with those features without interacting with qemu. It's an impossible problem for qemu to solve (arbitrating access to state stored in a third party management app). 1) Allow libvirt users to access features of qemu that are not exposed through libvirt That's an artificial problem. If libvirt exposes all features, you don't need to solve it. It won't. Otherwise, we wouldn't be having this discussion. 2) Provide a means for non-libvirt users to interact with qemu We have qmp. It doesn't do multiple guest management. I think it's reasonable to have a qemud which does (and also does sVirt and the zillion other things libvirt does) provided we remove them from libvirt (long term). The only problem is that it's a lot of effort. It depends on what things you think are important. A lot of libvirt's complexity is based on the fact that it uses a daemon and needs to deal with the security implications of that. You don't need explicit labelling if you don't use a daemon. This is really the qemu model (as opposed to the xend model). In theory, it does support this with the session urls but they are currently second-class citizens in libvirt. The remote dispatch also adds a fair bit of complexity and at least for the use-cases I'm interested in, it's not an important feature. 3) Provide a unified and interoperable view of the world for non-libvirt and libvirt users This problem can be solved by the non-libvirt users adopting libvirt, or the libvirt users dropping libvirt. I don't understand why we need to add interoperability between users who choose an interoperability library and users who don't choose an interoperability library. What I'd like to avoid is user confusion. Should a user use libvirt or libqemu? If they make a decision to use libqemu and then down the road want to use libvirt, how hard is it to switch? Fragmentation hurts the ecosystem and discourages good applications from existing. I think it's our responsibility to ensure there's a good management API that exists for qemu that we can actively recommend to our users. libvirt is very good at typical virtualization uses of qemu but qemu is much more than just that and has lots of advanced features. For (1), we all agree that the best case scenario would be for libvirt to support every qemu feature. I think we can also all agree though that this is not really practical and certainly not practical for developers since there is a development cost associated with libvirt support (to model an API appropriately). All except me, perhaps. We already have two layers of feature modeling: first, we mostly emulate real life, not invent new features. PCI hotplug existed long before qemu had support for it. Second, we do give some thought into how we expose it through QMP. libvirt doesn't have to invent it again, it only has to expose it through its lovely xml and C APIs. That's not what the libvirt community wants to do. We're very bias. We've made decisions about how features should be exposed and what features should be included. We want all of those features exposed exactly how we've implemented them because we think it's the right way. I'm not sure there's an obvious way forward unless we decide that there is going to be two ways to interact with qemu. One way is through the libvirt world-view and the other is through a more qemu centric view. The problem then becomes allowing those two models to co-exist happily together. The alternative is to get libvirt to just act as a thin layer to expose qemu features directly. But honestly, what's the point of libvirt if they did that? For the most part, the pool management is not virtualization specific and you could have libvirt provide that functionality without it knowing a thing about qemu. The new API proposed addresses (1) by allowing a user to drill down to the QMP context. It's a good solution IMHO and I think we all agree that there's an inherent risk to this that users will have to evaluate on a case-by-case basis. It's a good stop-gap though. Agree. (2) is largely addressed by QMP and a config file. I'd like to see a nice C library, but I think a lot of other folks are happy with JSON support in higher
