[libvirt] [Qemu-devel] Re: Supporting hypervisor specific APIs in libvirt

[Jamie Lokier]

Juan Quintela wrote:
> - monitor: I need a way to get to the monitor when going through
>   libvirt, in the past you couldn't allow this, but now it looks
>   possible.

Now you can just start another monitor connection to qemu :-)

Previously I've used a multiplexing script which accepts multiple
monitor connections, and passes the commands to the real connection.
It's not ideal because a slow command blocks any others, but it
basically works.

> - changing the emulator: It is normal for me to be using several qemu
>   binaries for testing, changing it with libvirt is just a mess.

Same here, except not just for testing: I need to use different qemu
binaries for production use, because newer ones don't work with some
VM images that work on older ones.

> - virt-viewer: I want to be able to switch consoles, period.

A decent VNC client gets close to this.  If the qemus advertised
themselves, some VNC clients would show a list of them automatically.
As it is, I use Gnome's VNC client with a bookmark for each VM, which
works quite well.  It even has tabs :-)

> - networking: man, setting networking is a mess, libvirt just does it
>   for you.

networking is often a mess, and what libvirt does isn't always what
you want, even if it often is.  I need the option to set up networking
separately and have libvirt use what it's given, otherwise I cannot use it.

-- Jamie