Re: [Qemu-devel] Merging improvements from VirtualBox OSE into qemu?

[Paul Brook <paul@codesourcery.com>]

On Wednesday 24 December 2008, Liraz Siri wrote:
> Paul Brook wrote:
> > You need root privileges to load the random kernel modules required to d
> > this. Not going to happen for qemu.
>
> There's at least one counter-precedent. qemu takes advantage of kqemu
> which is also a "random kernel module". How would supporting a kernel
> module that simplified a bridged networking be any different?

Well, I'm not a great fan of kqemu to start with. I suspect it may end up 
being removed sooner rather than later.

Networking is not a qemu specific feature. The first thing you need to do is 
convince the kernel folks that this is a useful feature, and get it 
implemented there. Then we can make qemu use that interface.
What you've described sounds a lot like the pcap interface, which has its own 
set of problems.

If your main argument is "users are too dumb to configure a bridge" then 
you're arguing from a fairly weak position. The answer tends to be that you 
need to make your configuration tools suck less.

Paul