[libvirt PATCH 9/9] rpc: use new virt-nc binary for remote tunnelling

[Andrea Bolognani]

On Thu, 2020-07-09 at 19:36 +0100, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote:
> This wires up support for using the new virt-nc binary with the ssh,
> libssh and libssh2 protocols.
> 
> The new binary will be used preferentially if it is available in $PATH,
> otherwise we fall back to traditional netcat.
> 
> The "proxy" URI parameter can be used to force use of netcat e.g.
> 
>   qemu+ssh://host/system?proxy=netcat
> 
> or the disable fallback e.g.
> 
>   qemu+ssh://host/system?proxy=virt-nc
> 
> With use of virt-nc, we can now support remote session URIs
> 
>   qemu+ssh://host/session
> 
> and this will only use virt-nc, with no fallback. This also lets the
> libvirtd process be auto-started.

Just a couple of comments about the UI: would it make sense to use
something like

  qemu+ssh://host/system?tunnelcmd=virt-tunnel

instead? virt-nc could be seen as a bit of a misnomer, considering
that (by design) it doesn't do nearly as much as the actual netcat
does; as for the 'proxy' argument, I'm afraid it might lead people
to believe it's used for HTTP proxying or some other form of
proxying *between the client and the host*, whereas it's really
something that only affects operations on the host itself - not to
mention that we also have a virtproxyd now, further increasing the
potential for confusion...

I'd also be remiss if I didn't point out that this is definitely a
change worth documenting in our release notes :)

-- 
Andrea Bolognani / Red Hat / Virtualization