From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: jvrao Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] [GSoC 2010] Pass-through filesystem support. Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2010 08:16:58 -0700 Message-ID: <4BC3396A.6020404@linux.vnet.ibm.com> References: <20100409212212.GB31666@shareable.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Mohammed Gamal , Anthony Liguori , Cam Macdonell , qemu-devel@nongnu.org, kvm-devel , Eric Van Hensbergen To: Jamie Lokier Return-path: Received: from e33.co.us.ibm.com ([32.97.110.151]:55358 "EHLO e33.co.us.ibm.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751840Ab0DLPRJ (ORCPT ); Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:17:09 -0400 Received: from d03relay03.boulder.ibm.com (d03relay03.boulder.ibm.com [9.17.195.228]) by e33.co.us.ibm.com (8.14.3/8.13.1) with ESMTP id o3CFDIpN012863 for ; Mon, 12 Apr 2010 09:13:18 -0600 Received: from d03av01.boulder.ibm.com (d03av01.boulder.ibm.com [9.17.195.167]) by d03relay03.boulder.ibm.com (8.13.8/8.13.8/NCO v10.0) with ESMTP id o3CFH58A090886 for ; Mon, 12 Apr 2010 09:17:05 -0600 Received: from d03av01.boulder.ibm.com (loopback [127.0.0.1]) by d03av01.boulder.ibm.com (8.14.3/8.13.1/NCO v10.0 AVout) with ESMTP id o3CFH2gE005311 for ; Mon, 12 Apr 2010 09:17:04 -0600 In-Reply-To: <20100409212212.GB31666@shareable.org> Sender: kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Jamie Lokier wrote: > Mohammed Gamal wrote: >> 2- With respect to CIFS. I wonder how the shares are supposed to be >> exposed to the guest. Should the Samba server be modified to be able >> to use unix domain sockets instead of TCP ports and then QEMU >> communicating on these sockets. With that approach, how should the >> guest be able to see the exposed share? And what is the problem of >> using Samba with TCP ports? > > One problem with TCP ports is it only works when the guest's network > is up :) You can't boot from that. It also makes things fragile or > difficult if the guest work you are doing involves fiddling with the > network settings. > > Doing it over virtio-serial would have many benefits. > > On the other hand, Samba+TCP+CIFS does have the advantage of working > with virtually all guest OSes, including Linux / BSDs / Windows / > MacOSX / Solaris etc. 9P only works with Linux as far as I know. Here is the list of 9p platforms http://9p.cat-v.org/implementations > > I big problem with Samba at the moment is it's not possible to > instantiate multiple instances of Samba any more, and not as a > non-root user. That's because it contains some hard-coded paths to > directories of run-time state, at least on Debian/Ubuntu hosts where I > have tried and failed to use qemu's smb option, and there is no config > file option to disable that or even change all the paths. > > Patching Samba to make per-user instantiations possible again would go > a long way to making it useful for filesystem passthrough. Patching > it so you can turn off all the fancy features and have it _just_ serve > a filesystem with the most basic necessary authentication would be > even better. > > -- Jamie > >