Re: Virtio File System.

[Avi Kivity <avi@qumranet.com>]

scott.kvm@scottrix.co.uk wrote:
>
> I am new to this mailing list, so please let me know if I am in the 
> wrong place or asking questions in a way I shouldn't.
>

Here is fine.  virtualization@lists.linux-foundation.org is also a good 
place since virtio is not kvm specific.

> I was wondering if anyone had thought about creating a virtio file 
> system, rather than using a block device and hence a single file on 
> the host OS as the virtio block device already does, but map file 
> system calls on the guest OS to file system calls on the host OS 
> through the virtio interface.  In this way the Guest OS could share 
> files with the Host OS without needing to use Samba, which from my 
> current experiences is rather slow.

There was some work using the plan 9 filesystem protocol over virtio.  
Not sure where that stands.  You could base your work off that.

>
> I have started to play with the idea a little myself, but my biggest 
> problem is that I have no clue how to write filesystem drives in my 
> Guest OS, Window XP, or even if it is possible to get a Windows 
> FileSystem driver to talk directly to a PCI device, or if some kind of 
> dummy block device would be needed.
>

It ought to be possible; the Windows smb stack works without a block device.

> My host OS is Linux, Guest OS is Windows XP.  Maybe I should start 
> with a Linux/Linux setup and get that working first ?

That's definitely a good idea.

-- 
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