virtio-serial: A guest <-> host interface for simple communication

Amit Shah
2009-06-23T12:42:41Z

Hello,

Here are two patches. One implements a virtio-serial device in qemu
and the other is the driver for a guest kernel.

While working on a vmchannel interface that is needed for communication
between guest userspace and host userspace, I saw that most of the
interface can be abstracted out as a "serial" device with "ports".

Some requirements for a vmchannel are listed at this page:
http://kvm.et.redhat.com/page/VMchannel_Requirements

A few sample uses for a vmchannel are to share the host and guest
clipboards (to allow copy/paste between a host and a guest), to
lock the screen of the guest session when the vnc viewer is closed,
to find out which applications are installed on a guest OS even when
the guest is powered down (using virt-inspector) and so on.

At this time, the qemu device is more complete than the guest driver
is. However, I'd like you to review both the patches for inclusion.

Thanks,
Amit.