Re: 9p file system for xen

[Wei Liu <wei.liu2@citrix.com>]

On Tue, Nov 17, 2015 at 12:50:29PM -0700, Linda wrote:
> 
> 
> On 11/17/2015 11:35 AM, Neil Sikka wrote:
> >How does Linda's work relate to Wei's patches available here (I didnt see
> >them in Xen-4.6.0):
> >
> >http://downloads.xen.org/Wiki/VirtioOnXen/qemu-01-xenpv-exec.patch
> >http://downloads.xen.org/Wiki/VirtioOnXen/qemu-02-virtio-for-pv.patch
> I'll let Wei answer this.

That wasn't upstreamed at all. Admittedly that was done when I didn't
know much about Xen. I would have done that project differently
nowadays.

And to clarify things: virtio on Xen is a different project than 9pfs on
Xen. 9pfs is not tied to virtio in any way. Just that there is currently
only virtio-9pfs available.

So to make 9pfs work on Xen, there are at least two ways. One is to make
virtio work on Xen so that we subsequently get virtio-9pfs (along with
all other virtio devices); the other is to implement xen-9pfs (I made up
this name).

I'm not sure whether you're interested in virtio on Xen or just 9pfs.

> >
> >Also, since 9p is being worked on, which is a filesystem that should be
> >implemented in a kernel rather than a hypervisor, are you looking to
> >contribute this driver to the Linux kernel?
> What I did was write new kernel routines and new Qemu routines, as well as

I think Neil was talking about the "new kernel routines". Yes, that
would need to be upstreamed eventually.

Wei.

> modifying a few existing Qemu files.  The initialization is currently done
> manually by modifying xenstore.  This is the only code that properly belongs
> in the hypervisor.
> 
> I hope this clarifies things.
> 
> Linda