From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:56894) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RQOx3-0007bf-W9 for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Tue, 15 Nov 2011 14:45:54 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RQOwz-0006iu-KD for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Tue, 15 Nov 2011 14:45:49 -0500 Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([209.132.183.28]:49560) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RQOwz-0006im-BR for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Tue, 15 Nov 2011 14:45:45 -0500 Message-ID: <4EC2C166.8030403@redhat.com> Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 14:45:42 -0500 From: Perry Myers MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <201111151924.41357.bazulay@redhat.com> <4EC2A8F6.2020406@redhat.com> <4EC2AAA0.5010205@redhat.com> In-Reply-To: <4EC2AAA0.5010205@redhat.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] converging around a single guest agent List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: Subhendu Ghosh Cc: Gal Hammer , arch@ovirt.org, qemu-devel@nongnu.org, vdsm-devel@lists.fedorahosted.org On 11/15/2011 01:08 PM, Subhendu Ghosh wrote: > On 11/15/2011 01:01 PM, Perry Myers wrote: >> On 11/15/2011 12:24 PM, Barak Azulay wrote: >>> Hi, >>> >>> One of the breakout sessions during the ovirt workshop [1] was about >>> the guest >>> tools, and focused mainly on the ovirt-guest-agent [2]. >>> >>> One of the issues discussed there, was the various existing guest >>> agents out >>> there, and the need to converge the efforts to a single agent that >>> will serve >>> all. >>> >>> while 4 agents were mentioned (Matahari, vdagent, qemu-ga& >>> ovirt-guest-agent) >>> during that discussion, we narrowed it down to 2 candidates: >>> >>> qemu-ga (aka virt-agent): >>> ------------------------- >>> - Qemu specific - it was aimed for specific qemu needs (mainly >>> quiesce guest >>> I/O) >>> - Communicates directly with qemu (not implemented yet) >>> - Supports ? >>> - So far linux only >>> - written in C >>> >>> Ovirt-guest-agent: >>> ------------------ >>> - Has been around for a long time (~5 years) - considered stable >>> - Started as rhevm specific but evolved a lot since then >>> - Currently the only fully functional guest agent available for ovirt >>> - Written in python >>> - Some VDI related sub components are written in C& C++ >>> - Supports a well defined list of message types / protocol [3] >>> - Supports the folowing guest OSs >>> Linux: RHEL5, RHEL6 F15, F16(soon) >>> Windows: xp, 2k3 (32/64), w7 (32/64), 2k8 (32/64/R2) >>> >>> >>> The need to converge is obvious, and now that ovirt-guest-agent is >>> opensourced >>> under the ovirt stack, and since it already produces value for >>> enterprise >>> installations, and is cross platform, I offer to join hands around >>> ovirt- >>> guest-agent and formalize a single code base that will serve us all. >>> >>> git @ git://gerrit.ovirt.org/ovirt-guest-agent >>> >>> Thoughts ? >> >> +1 >> >> The only downside that I concretely heard from folks re: >> ovirt-guest-agent was that it is written in Python. Two thoughts there: >> >> 1. On Windows it is compiled to an executable, so no separate python >> stack needed >> >> 2. ovirt-guest-agent is not very large and does not bring in a lot >> (any?) additional python class dependencies above/beyond the core >> language and interpreter. Given this, the chances of dealing with >> python stack issues are probably minimal and also the overhead of >> including _just_ the base python interpreter in a given guest OS is >> very lightweight. Core python RPM in F16 is about 80k. >> >> Perry > > If you needed WMI enablement on Windows - could you support that with > this arch? I'm not a WMI expert, but google search first result on 'python WMI' turned up: http://timgolden.me.uk/python/wmi/index.html