Re: [Qemu-devel] [patch 18/18] qemu: PCI device, disk and host network hot-add / hot-remove

[Anthony Liguori <anthony@codemonkey.ws>]

Avi Kivity wrote:
> Anthony Liguori wrote:
>>
>> It doesn't support this today but additional patches to enable that 
>> are certainly welcome.  The best way would be a generic mechanism to 
>> send a file descriptor to QEMU that could then be used anywhere fd= 
>> is valid.  For instance:
>>
>> (qemu) receivefd unix:foo.sock,server
>> fd=5
>> (qemu) closefd 5
>
> (qemu) receivefd myfd
> // qemu receives an fd over the monitor, and attaches it to the tag 
> 'myfd'

Completely reasonable, but it's going to be hard to implement in a way 
that doesn't suck.  You'll have to extend the character driver interface 
to support receiving file descriptors, plumb that appropriately through 
the monitor.

Seems like an odd abstraction to me though as unix domain sockets are 
the only transport that I know of that supports sending fds.

> (qemu) closefd myfd
> // qemu closes the fd attached to tag 'myfd'
>
> Advantages:
> - no runtime handshaking with a new socket
> - work with names, not numbers you need to read off the monitor

Names are fine.  I would have requested that the numbers be validated 
which require them to be tracked which makes them essentially names anyway.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori