[libvirt] [PATCH 1/4] esx: parse new URI param 'allow_unsafe'

[Martin Kletzander]

On Mon, May 05, 2014 at 01:48:03PM -0600, Eric Blake wrote:
>On 05/05/2014 03:47 AM, Martin Kletzander wrote:
>> Signed-off-by: Martin Kletzander <mkletzan at redhat.com>
>> ---
>>  docs/drvesx.html.in | 14 ++++++++++++++
>>  src/esx/esx_util.c  | 13 ++++++++++++-
>>  src/esx/esx_util.h  |  2 ++
>>  3 files changed, 28 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
>>
>> diff --git a/docs/drvesx.html.in b/docs/drvesx.html.in
>> index 0816baf..d941763 100644
>> --- a/docs/drvesx.html.in
>> +++ b/docs/drvesx.html.in
>> @@ -185,6 +185,20 @@ vpx://example-vcenter.com/folder1/dc1/folder2/example-esx.com
>>                  override the default port 1080.
>>              </td>
>>          </tr>
>> +        <tr>
>> +            <td>
>> +                <code>allow_unsafe</code>
>> +            </td>
>> +            <td>
>> +                <code>0</code> or <code>1</code>
>> +            </td>
>> +            <td>
>> +                If set to 1, this disables check for supported
>> +                virtualHW.version, so connections to newer versions
>> +                than supported is possible.  The default value is 0.
>
>"connections" is plural, so s/is possible/are possible/
>
>On the surface this (and the rest of the series) makes sense - it allows
>older libvirt to be used with a newer ESX version which may or may not
>work, until such time as newer libvirt has been tested to explicitly
>work with that ESX.  But I'd like an opinion from someone that actually
>uses esx:// URIs before checking this in.
>

Since the vmx parsing was moved to vmx/vmx.c (so basically since it
was introduced), we were blindly (or at least in some cases) adding
"support" for newer virtualHW_versions (version 8 in commit 5759a5cc,
9 in e0eb672e and finally 10 now in 5cc3cce5).  I tried getting
someone to test the version I added, but since there's so few of us
working with ESX (I had to ask Matthias if he can have a look at the
code), we can only assume that it will work.  I even remember someone
filing a bug that the connection works and everything, but there's a
warning.  My thinking was that we have two options here:

 1) continue messing the code with blindly adding versions of
    virtualHW or

 2) conditionally allow anything the user wants, with the condition
    showing that we don't "support" it.

My reasoning behind choosing version 2 was that the development around
VMX-related backends is not that active as with other ones.  So if
anything doesn't work because of HW version it is somehow visible that
the user is not using "supported" versions of vmx descriptors (or how
to call the .vmx file).  I designed the patch so there is no
functional nor API change with current usage, it merely allows to
check whether our code works with newer versions without touching the
code (currently, when someone wants to try that, he needs to add the
version to supported ones, obviously).  And it still leaves the list
of supported versions in place and whoever wants some version to be
supported can add it to the list.

I know it is impossible to force people fix everything for versions
they added, but it could be at least a bit visible that we currently
don't have the capacity for that.

Martin
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