Re: [PATCH qemu-kvm] Add raw(af_packet) network backend to qemu

[Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>]

On Wednesday 27 January 2010, Sridhar Samudrala wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-01-27 at 22:39 +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> > On Wednesday 27 January 2010, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> > > >> I think -net socket,fd should just be (trivially) extended to work with raw
> > > >> sockets out of the box, with no support for opening it. Then you can have
> > > >> libvirt or some wrapper open a raw socket and a private namespace and just pass it
> > > >> down.
> > > >>      
> > > > That'd work. Anthony?
> > > 
> > > The fundamental problem that I have with all of this is that we should 
> > > not be introducing new network backends that are based around something 
> > > only a developer is going to understand.  If I'm a user and I want to 
> > > use an external switch in VEPA mode, how in the world am I going to know 
> > > that I'm supposed to use the -net raw backend or the -net socket 
> > > backend?  It might as well be the -net butterflies backend as far as a 
> > > user is concerned.
> > 
> > My point is that we already have -net socket,fd and any user that passes
> > an fd into that already knows what he wants to do with it. Making it
> > work with raw sockets is just a natural extension to this, which works
> > on all kernels and (with separate namespaces) is reasonably secure.
> 
> Didn't realize that -net socket is already there and supports TCP and
> UDP sockets. I will look into extending -net socket to support AF_PACKET
> SOCK_RAW type sockets.

Actually, Jens had a patch doing this in early 2009 already but we
decided to not send that one out at the time after Or had sent his
version of the raw socket interface, which was a superset. Maybe Jens
can post his patch again if that still applies?

	Arnd