From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:52247) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1QZiFC-00077s-Ib for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 23 Jun 2011 07:38:47 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1QZiF9-000595-Ui for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 23 Jun 2011 07:38:46 -0400 Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([209.132.183.28]:36646) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1QZiF9-00058q-GZ for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 23 Jun 2011 07:38:43 -0400 Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2011 12:38:35 +0100 From: "Daniel P. Berrange" Message-ID: <20110623113835.GC14307@redhat.com> References: <4E023A9D.9010205@linux.vnet.ibm.com> <20110623092954.GA2682@bow.redhat.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] RFC: Qemu Guest Tools ISO Reply-To: "Daniel P. Berrange" List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: Stefan Hajnoczi Cc: agl@linux.vnet.ibm.com, Michael Roth , "qemu-devel@nongnu.org Developers" , Anthony Liguori , pmyers@redhat.com, bsarathy@redhat.com On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 12:08:26PM +0100, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote: > On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 10:29 AM, Alon Levy wrote: > > On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 01:55:25PM -0500, Michael Roth wrote: > >> Goal: > >> > >> Provide a mechanism, similar to vmware and virtualbox guest tools > >> ISOs, that allows us to easily distribute guest tools (and > >> potentially drivers) for linux and windows guests. > > > > What would be the advantage for linux guests, with their package managers already > > handling this task? I see how it would make testing easier with various linux > > distributions, but for management I wonder if it won't be easier to use the > > package management system to update the guests same as the hosts. > > If the guest tools come from the host QEMU we don't need complicated > compatibility testing and fallbacks. Guest and host will be in sync > and support the same features. > > I'm not sure how we can update guest tools when the QEMU on the host > is updated though. While an ISO is a good option for the initial deployment, since it can be used to provide both the virtio drivers + agents together, once you have the virtio stuff installed in the guest, it might be worth exposing updated tools via a 9p filesystem mount. For Linux guest the 9p fs exposed could include a YUM repo (or equiv) which the guest update tool would automatically see and pull updates from, since 9pfs is "live" unlike an ISO. Regards, Daniel -- |: http://berrange.com -o- http://www.flickr.com/photos/dberrange/ :| |: http://libvirt.org -o- http://virt-manager.org :| |: http://autobuild.org -o- http://search.cpan.org/~danberr/ :| |: http://entangle-photo.org -o- http://live.gnome.org/gtk-vnc :|