Re: [Qemu-devel] Looking for an easy way to exchange data bidirectional between host and guest (including some suggestion)

[marten@xtal.rwth-aachen.de]

> On Fri, 3 Jun 2005, Jan Marten Simons wrote:
>
>> Ok, I talked about this issue in irc lately, but as this list will have
>> a larger audience I'll post this here as well. So here is the (cleaned)
>> log:
>>
>> What I want:
>>
>> <jamasi> some feature I'm really missing is: a v(S)FTP sever inside the
>> emulated network offering a local folder of the host for R/W-access.
>
> Running a FTP server on the host with proper permissions is sufficient for
> this. There is plenty of FTP servers available for all platforms where
> qemu runs.

As Jim Brown said it's not that easy to use a FTP-server on the host, if
you've got no root/admin-access.

Think of this scenario: A DVD with qemu and some disc-image and some
start-up-script for linux and an autostart.exe for win-host which will
fire-up the disk-image really easy. That way you can have a sand-boxed
standard environment which can be used on either windows or linux hosts
without the need to configure those. Now you should preconfigure your
guest to save personal information somewhere. So I'd like to have an
"exchange"-director inside the $home of the current user which should be
avialiable inside the virtual-pc for read/write. I think it would be the
easiest way to offer it via an integrated FTP-server. The advantages are:
- no ide-channel is blocked (unlike vvFat)
- ftp IS a very common protocol (is there SMB for exotic OS?)
- as the server is only virtual, you don't have to care about security-issues
- the server only runs, when it is needed
- implementaion should be easy (get some open-source FTP, strip it down
and change its binding to an interface like it was done with the internal
dhcp)
- the data-transfer resides inside the guest, which would be more
intuitive to the non-technical user when working in the VM.

> btw: The SMB server (Samba) provides read/write access if you insist on
> it. All you in theory need to do is to set up the password file on the
> host.

The Samba-wrapper does not work on Win-on-Win situations

> What would perhaps make sense in this discussion is to generalize the
> user-net port redirection used for the SMB access allowing it to be used
> in a more general manner, then perhaps even ripping out the smb (Samba)
> support glue and replacing it by a wrapper setting things up as suitable
> using the general slirp pipe support. So instead of having the smb support
> glue hardcoded within the qemu binary just have it start the suitable
> daemon wrapper when the port in question is accessed. Apart for allowing
> it to be used for other services than SMB it would also allow the SMB
> support to be tailored more closely to your needs.

This would be desirable, too. But I think that this would be far more
difficult to implement.

Have a nice day,
Jan