[libvirt] [Qemu-devel] Re: Supporting hypervisor specific APIs in libvirt
Anthony Liguori
anthony at codemonkey.ws
Mon Mar 22 21:53:52 UTC 2010
On 03/22/2010 04:33 PM, Gerd Hoffmann wrote:
> Hi,
>
>> Stepping back a bit first, there are the two core areas in which
>> people can
>> be limited by libvirt currently.
>
>> 2. Command line flags
>
> For me: This one, and monitor access.
>
> libvirt is very unfriendly to qemu hackers. There is no easy way to
> add command line switches. There is no easy way to get access to the
> monitor. I can get it done by pointing <emulator> to a wrapper script
> and mangle the qemu command line there. But this sucks big time. And
> it doesn't integrate with libvirt at all.
It's not just developers. As we're doing deployments of qemu/kvm, we
keep running into the same problem. We realize that we need to use a
feature of qemu/kvm that isn't modelled by libvirt today. I've gone as
far as to temporarily pausing libvirtd, finding the pty fd from
/proc/<pid>, and hijacking the monitor session temporarily.
The problem is, it's not always easy to know what the most important
features are.
>
> When hacking qemu, especially when adding new command line options or
> monitor commands, I want to have a easy way to test this stuff. Or I
> just wanna able to type some 'info $foo' commands for debugging and
> trouble shooting purposes. libvirt makes it harder not easier to get
> the job done.
>
> Image you could ask libvirt to create an additional monitor and expose
> it like a serial console. virt-manager lists it as text console. Two
> mouse clicks open a new window (or tab) with a terminal emulator
> linked to the monitor. Wouldn't that be cool?
>
> Other issues I've trap into:
>
> -boot
> libvirt (or virt-manager?) supports only the very old single letter
> style. You can't specify '-boot order=cd,menu=on'.
You can, you specify multiple <boot> options (but you can't touch things
like menu=on).
Regards,
Anthony Liguori
> -enable-nested
> not available.
>
> serial console doesn't work for remote connections.
>
> cheers,
> Gerd
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