[Qemu-devel] Network bridging without adding bridge with brctl, possible?

[Gerhard Wiesinger <lists@wiesinger.com>]

Hello,

I like the way like VMWare Server 2.x does bridging: There is no need to 
change basic network interface settings and add a bridge between the 
existing network interface like e.g. discussed in:
http://www.linux-kvm.com/content/using-bridged-networking-virt-manager

VMWare Server 2.x does the following:
1.) Add vmnet network interfaces with vmnet.tar code (should be GPL v2).
2.) Starting a user mode process which I guess does the forwarding: /usr/bin/vmnet-bridge
/usr/bin/vmnet-bridge -d /var/run/vmnet-bridge-0.pid -n 0 -i eth0
3.) 2 other processes:
/usr/bin/vmnet-netifup -d /var/run/vmnet-netifup-vmnet1.pid /dev/vmnet1 vmnet1
/usr/bin/vmnet-dhcpd -cf /etc/vmware/vmnet1/dhcpd/dhcpd.conf -lf /etc/vmware/vmnet1/dhcpd/dhcpd.leases -pf /var/run/vmnet-dhcpd-vmnet1.pid vmnet1

/usr/bin/vmnet-bridge
Either the '-n' or '-p' option must be given exactly once.
Usage: vmnet-bridge (-n<number> | -p<uuid>) [-d<file name>] 
[(-e<interface> | -i<interface>)] [-s<number>] [-h]
        -i<interface> include interface
        -e<interface> exclude interface
        -g            prefer default gateway interface
        -n<number>    virtual network
        -p<uuid>      private virtual network
        -d<file name> process identifier file name
        -s<number>    optional pipe descriptor for service to send
                      a two byte startup status code
        -h            help

Might this also be easily possible with QEMU/KVM?
What do you thing about this? Worth to implement?
Any other suggestions to achieve this?

Thnx.

Ciao,
Gerhard

--
http://www.wiesinger.com/