[netcf-devel] [libvirt] [RFC] Reporting host interface status/statistics via netcf/libvirt, and listing active vs. inactive interfaces

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 09:15:54AM +0200, Jonas Eriksson wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 01:27:14PM -0700 David Lutterkort wrote:
> > or forever hold your peace.
> 
> While talking about the relax-ng schema, I would like to
> again raise my question earlier raised at the netcf-devel-list
> in order to get some input from the libvirt developers on this
> matter as well.
> 
> I am a bit critical to the policy restrictions of the current
> incarnation of the netcf API. Currently, a interface (or
> connection) has to have an IP address and a bridge has to have
> one or more interfaces attached to it.
> 
> Not having the IP address restriction may collide head on with
> the connection-approach for some, as a connection probably have
> to be addressable. I however argue that this severly limits the
> uses for netcf, say for example to only bridge two interfaces
> without caring (and perhaps not wanting) to be something other
> then a package forwarder and not care about IP-address
> collisions. And in another case, the addressing is done using
> something other then IP.

Indeed having a bridge without an IP address is an important
feature for virtualization, because you may wish to have the
host completely separate from guests in terms of IP subnets.
Thus you would not want the bridge to have an IP address to
which the guest can connect. So IP must be optional, allowing
for a choice of 'none', 'manual' or 'dhcp', or in IPv6 case
'none', 'manual', 'autoconf', or 'dhcp'.

> For the bridges without added interfaces, an example is libvirt
> that have these private networks that I don't think I have to go
> in to in detail.

Actually the libvirt private networks should not be visible
via this virInterface/netcf API IMHO. I agree with your 
point though, that it may be desirable to create bridges
without any interface attached.


Daniel
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