[Libvir] [RFC] Device attach/detach on virsh

[Daniel Veillard]

On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 06:50:53PM +0900, Masayuki Sunou wrote:
> I want to add I/F to do attach/detatch of VIF and VBD to virsh with
> virDomainAttachDevice()/virDomainDetachDevice(). 
> And, I have two proposals about I/F for virsh to do attach/detach of VIF and VBD.
> 
> proposal 1:
>   Virsh catches MAC, bridge name, device name (physical,virtual), and another 
>   by the command option.
[...]
>   <advantage>
>     - I/F is easy to use than proposal 1. (Because the user does not have to
>       make XML)
>   <disadvantage>
>     - I/F increases because I/F of VIF and VBD becomes separate. (So, the
>       addition of I/F is necessary at any time for supporting devices other
>       than VIF and VBD. )
>     - Handling of optional analysis, handling of XML making are necessary
>       in virsh.c, and processing becomes complicated.

  To me this proposal is not okay as-is because it looks completely tied to
Xen. But maybe I didn't understand, suppose I use KVM what would be the vbd
or vif parameter looking like ? We need at least to change the terminology
i.e. replace vif and vbd terms, but I'm afraid 

   One important problem is naming, suppose you want to remove a network
device, how will you name that device ? Using a vif Xen device number is
not proper in my opinion it makes it really hard for the user (i.e. you
have to dig in Xen internal to find the number).

> 
> proposal 2:
>   virsh catches a definition of a device by XML 
> 
>   ex)
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------
>     # virsh help attach(detach)-device
>       NAME
>         attach(detach)-device - attach(detach) device from an XML file
> 
>       SYNOPSIS
>         attach(detach)-device <domain> <file>
> 
>       DESCRIPTION
>         Attach(Detach) device from an XML <file>
> 
>       OPTIONS
>         <domain>         domain name, id or uuid
>         <file>           XML file of device description
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
>   <advantage>
>     - I/F is unified without affecting a device type. (I/F is simple)
>     - Handling of virsh.c is simple. (Optional analysis is not necessary)
>   <disadvantage>
>     - The user has to describe XML.(It is troublesome) 
> 
> 
> I think that specifications that a user is easy to use (proposal 1)
> are better.
> Please, give me an opinion which proposal is better.

  it looks to me that only proposal 2 is not tied to a given engine and 
would work even if we add very different system with more complex devices.
But I agree it's not perfect from a user point of view either.

Daniel

-- 
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Daniel Veillard      | virtualization library  http://libvirt.org/
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