[libvirt] RFC: configuring host interfaces with libvirt

[Kaitlin Rupert]

David Lutterkort wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-01-29 at 13:34 -0800, Kaitlin Rupert wrote:
>> Mark McLoughlin wrote:
>>>>> I don't think we want to define a bridge here, but more that an
>>>>> interface is shared - i.e. this is a property of eth2.
>>> Note this line.
>>>
>>>>> The main concern is that this is the way I'd expect NetworkManager to
>>>>> support it - i.e. that you could configure NetworkManager to share eth0,
>>>>> rather than ask it to create br0 and add eth0 to it.
>>>>>
>>>>> If you just want to create a bridge, you can creati a virtual network.
>> Sorry to chime in so late...  the virtual network support only allows 
>> the user to define bridges with NAT/routed forwarding.
> 
> I tripped over this the first time, too; to put words in Mark's mouth,
> he meant 'bridge' here in the sense of a 'vritual network'. He calls a
> bridge with one enslaved physical NIC a 'shared network interface' (and
> doesn't much care for bridges with more NIC's ;)

Ah, okay. This makes sense.  Thanks for the clarification.

> 
> After talking to NM people, there doesn't seem to be a concern with NM
> compat - they are fine with the more explicit representation of a
> bridge.
> 
>> Would the still behave as a virtual network pool in this case?  If 
>> multiple guests are tied to the same bridge, it would be useful to 
>> represent this as some kind of pool or grouping.
> 
> Not sure what you mean here ... with all this, you'd still set your
> guests up the way you do today, with appropriate sources for their
> network interfaces, e.g. <source bridge='br0'/>

Would there be the bridge equivalents of 
virConnectListNetworks()/virConnectListDefinedNetworks(): a way to list 
the available bridges?

After reading through all the mails again, I believe this is what's 
being proposed, so I think I might have answered my own question. =)

-- 
Kaitlin Rupert
IBM Linux Technology Center
kaitlin at linux.vnet.ibm.com