[virt-tools-list] Supporting remote connections to QEMU session mode

[sbaugh at catern.com]

(please keep me CC'd, I'm not subscribed to this list)

Hi,

Has there been any thought given to supporting remote connections to
QEMU session instances in virt-manager?
(i.e. qemu+ssh://hostname/session?socket=path) Manually hacking in the
URI with dconf seems to mostly work, but (for example) I quickly
encountered a bug when creating a VM where virt-manager assumed the only
usable storage pool was my *local* homedir instead of the remote
homedir.

virsh and other tools support these connections just fine.

The reason I want to remotely connect to a QEMU session instance is
because with qemu-bridge-helper giving unprivileged access to bridges,
if one also does chmod 666 /dev/kvm, QEMU session instances actually
become quite useful. You can run actual production VMs with them.

Specifically, I want to use them as a way to roll out a virtual machine
service for all the students at my university: Just give them a shell
account, set some ulimits and tell them how to make a session-mode
vm. (I know, there are some flaws in my ability to really do limits
here, but it's enough for my use case). If they were able to use
virt-manager instead of virsh to manage those VMs, it would sure make it
easier for them... and I think there are a lot of this kind of use case
that are enabled by the existence of qemu-bridge-helper.

Thanks for your time,
Spencer Baugh