Re: [Libvir] RFC: Supporting serial & parallel ports for QEMU (and improving Xen)

On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 08:18:42PM +0100, Daniel P. Berrange wrote: > On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 10:58:02AM +0200, Gerd Hoffmann wrote: > > Hi, > > > > >The question as ever is how to represent this in XML. For serial ports > > >we'll > > >stick with '<console>', while parallel ports we might as well use a better > > >named '<parallel>'. > > > > Hmm, I'd prefer to use '<serial>', much less confusing in the long run. > > And maybe alias '<console>' to '<serial port=0>' for compatibility. > > There is actually one compelling reason to do this - the Xen paravirt > console really isn't a true serial port. It is just a dumb text console > driver, so perhaps it is better to distinguish <console> from <serial> > with this scenario. We already use <console> for HVM too though - so > perhaps we should say > > - <parallel> - parallel ports > - <serial> - serial ports > - <console> - first text based virtual console channel > > So, paravirt Xen would only ever have a <console> element. With fullyvirt > Xen the first <serial> port element would also be exposed as a <console> > element. Sounds nice to me. > > >Next up, I think should use a 'type' attribute on this > > >element to determine the main way ot connecting the device, and then more > > >type specific attributes or sub-elements as needed. If 'type' was not > > >specified then use a default of 'pty', since that gives compatability with > > >existing practice. > > > > Also enumerate them somehow, so you can configure multiple of them. > > Good point, better to have an explicit 'port' number attribute than > to rely on implict ordering of the devices in the XML, since there's > no other attribute in them giving uniqueness (cf device, or MAC in > disk or network). > > > >NB, whereever there are IP addresses, hostnames can be used too, hence I > > >call the attriute 'addr' instead of 'ip' > > > > s/addr/host/ + s/port/service/ to make clear that non-numeric stuff is > > accepted for both? > > > > <serial type='udp' port='0'> > > <sendto host='loghost' service='syslog'> > > </serial> > > Sounds reasonable. BTW what's the status ? wondering :-)