xen-devel.lists.xenproject.org archive mirror
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: David Scott <dave.scott@citrix.com>
To: xen-devel@lists.xenproject.org, ian.jackson@eu.citrix.com
Cc: David Scott <dave.scott@citrix.com>,
	wei.liu2@citrix.com, ian.campbell@citrix.com,
	stefano.stabellini@eu.citrix.com
Subject: [PATCH for-4.5 v5] add support for libvirt-like channels
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 21:54:56 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <1410814498-13953-1-git-send-email-dave.scott@citrix.com> (raw)

Hi,

I've incorporated IanC's feedback from the v4. IanJ: I've tried to
incorporate your feedback from the earlier v3 -- let me know what you think.
 
The blurb:

Several libvirt applications (e.g. oVirt, CloudStack) make use of 'channels': 
low-bandwidth private host <-> guest communication links which resemble serial 
ports. Typical uses include: 

* initial VM configuration without using the network: read the config data 
directly from the channel on boot 

* controlling a guest agent: signal shutdown reqests, exchange clipboard data, 
trigger resolution changes 

This patch set re-uses the existing PV console protocol implemented by qemu 
to provide this service. 

If you declare a channel in your .xl file as follows: 

channel = [ "connection=socket,path=/tmp/mysock,name=org.mydomain.guest-agent" ] 

then an extra PV console will be added to your guest. This console has the 
extra key in the frontend 

name = guest-agent 

which allows udev scripts in the VM to create a named device in a well-known 
location (e.g. /dev/xen-channels/guest-agent, similar to the KVM /dev/vports). 
The qemu process in the backend domain will proxy the data to/from the named 
Unix domain socket (in this case /tmp/mysock). 

Note this mechanism is intended for low-bandwidth communication only. If an 
application requires a high-bandwith connection then it should use a direct 
vchan connection (and not proxy it via a qemu). 

Changes since v4:
* doc: highlight that the 'output' key in the console configuration
  should be considered an internal implementation artifact
* return EINVAL if a primary console has invalid configuration
* Use LOG(ERROR,... rather than LIBXL__LOG(CTX, LIBXL__LOG_ERROR
* Use an abort() when implementation code is missing
* move READ_BACKEND to the top of the file (since it's generally useful)
* Remove stray tab

Changes since v3:
* docs: coalesce the docs patch into the libxl patch
* docs: in channels.txt give high-level usage information, pitfalls and
        channgle registry
* docs: move the xenstore paths into the existing console.txt, which is
        referenced from xenstore-paths.markdown
* idl: rename 'kind' to 'connection'
* xl: add parser functions for comma-separated lists of pairs

Changes since v2:
* trim down the 'kinds' of channels to PTY and SOCKET -- these seem the most
 useful and we can add more later
* add a channelinfo (queryable by 'channel-list') to check the state of each
 channel, and for a kind=PTY discover the slave device path
* IDL: switched to KeyedUnion for both the channel and channelinfo since
 each 'kind' will have different parameters (e.g. only SOCKET has PATH)
* write all the backend configuration parameters to xenstore -- where we were
 using qemu -chardev some crucial information was only on the command-line.
* add LIBXL_HAVE_DEVICE_CHANNEL
* docs: replace 'should' with 'will' e.g. the backend will be connected to
 a Unix domain socket
* squash all the libxl patches together into a coherent whole
* explain that there is no registry of channel names and so people should use
 unique information to create them (e.g. include domain name and interface
 version)

Changes since v1: 
* extend xl.cfg(5) 
* add docs/misc/channel.txt 
* libxl_types.idl: omit unnecessary init_val = 0 
* xl_cmdimpl.c: fixed over-long lines 
* xl_cmdimpl.c: use xrealloc (via ARRAY_EXTEND_INIT) 
* xl_cmdimpl.c: exit() on parse failure rather than ignore configuration 
* libxl_create.c: use libxl__device_console_init instead of memset 
* libxl_create.c: use libxl__strdup(NOGC rather than raw strdup 
* libxl.c: add name=<name> to console frontend 
* libxl.c: resolve the backend_domid from backend_domname 
* libxl_dm.c: channels[i].devid rather than i 
* libxl_dm.c: fix indentation 
* libxl_dm.c: use GCSPRINTF convenience macro 

Signed-off-by: David Scott <dave.scott@citrix.com>

             reply	other threads:[~2014-09-15 20:56 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 11+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2014-09-15 20:54 David Scott [this message]
2014-09-15 20:54 ` [PATCH v5 for-4.5 1/2] libxl: add support for 'channels' David Scott
2014-09-22 16:17   ` Ian Jackson
2014-09-23 10:16     ` Wei Liu
2014-09-23 10:35       ` Dave Scott
2014-09-23 10:45         ` Wei Liu
2014-09-24 15:33     ` Dave Scott
2014-09-26 11:16     ` Dave Scott
2014-09-15 20:54 ` [PATCH v5 for-4.5 2/2] xl: " David Scott
2014-09-22 16:25   ` Ian Jackson
2014-09-24 13:33     ` Dave Scott

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=1410814498-13953-1-git-send-email-dave.scott@citrix.com \
    --to=dave.scott@citrix.com \
    --cc=ian.campbell@citrix.com \
    --cc=ian.jackson@eu.citrix.com \
    --cc=stefano.stabellini@eu.citrix.com \
    --cc=wei.liu2@citrix.com \
    --cc=xen-devel@lists.xenproject.org \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).