Re: [libvirt] [Qemu-devel] Re: Supporting hypervisor specific APIs in libvirt
On 03/22/2010 04:33 PM, Gerd Hoffmann wrote:
Hi,
> Stepping back a bit first, there are the two core areas in which
> people can
> be limited by libvirt currently.
> 2. Command line flags
For me: This one, and monitor access.
libvirt is very unfriendly to qemu hackers. There is no easy way to
add command line switches. There is no easy way to get access to the
monitor. I can get it done by pointing <emulator> to a wrapper script
and mangle the qemu command line there. But this sucks big time. And
it doesn't integrate with libvirt at all.
It's not just developers. As we're doing deployments of qemu/kvm, we
keep running into the same problem. We realize that we need to use a
feature of qemu/kvm that isn't modelled by libvirt today. I've gone as
far as to temporarily pausing libvirtd, finding the pty fd from
/proc/<pid>, and hijacking the monitor session temporarily.
The problem is, it's not always easy to know what the most important
features are.
When hacking qemu, especially when adding new command line options or
monitor commands, I want to have a easy way to test this stuff. Or I
just wanna able to type some 'info $foo' commands for debugging and
trouble shooting purposes. libvirt makes it harder not easier to get
the job done.
Image you could ask libvirt to create an additional monitor and expose
it like a serial console. virt-manager lists it as text console. Two
mouse clicks open a new window (or tab) with a terminal emulator
linked to the monitor. Wouldn't that be cool?
Other issues I've trap into:
-boot
libvirt (or virt-manager?) supports only the very old single letter
style. You can't specify '-boot order=cd,menu=on'.
You can, you specify multiple <boot> options (but you can't touch things
like menu=on).
Regards,
Anthony Liguori
-enable-nested
not available.
serial console doesn't work for remote connections.
cheers,
Gerd