Re: [Libvir] PATCH: Support NIC model selection for QEMU/KVM

On Wed, Oct 31, 2007 at 09:34:33AM -0400, Daniel Veillard wrote: > > Getting it fixed upstream might be best. We could also just have > > libvirt always append "model=rtl8139", but I'd be concerned that we > > could break existing VMs for some users if we swap out the network > > card unexpectedly. An upstream change would have the same problem. > > > > Regardless of what the defaults are, I don't think exposing a knob > > that lets you control what NIC the guest sees is that much of a hack; > > describing the guest hardware is what the config xml is mostly for. > > Agreed. The specifics of the hardware configuration emulated for the > domain have their place in the XML file. But I'm not sure what other > compatibility issues may arise if we applied such a patch. > Also I hate seeing a patch rot in the list archive without proper process > but I don't feel like I understand all the issues at stake here to really > try to apply it myself ... Having thought about it, I think its reasonable to aply some variant of this patch. Guest a question of how we want to present it as XML. Just to present some variants... <interface type="bridge"> <nic model="rtl8139"/> <source bridge="xenbr0"/> <target dev="vif1.0"/> </interface>

I guess I'd lean towards the first variant, which was Jim's original suggestion.

Of course for any of this to solve Jim's problem, we need virt-install and / or virt-manager to explicitly ask for the RTL8139 nic when creating new guests, otherwise you're still at the mercy of the underlying default NIC choice in QEMU/KVM/XEn which may or may not be RTL8139.