Re: [Qemu-devel] tun/tap networking: patch for existing tun

[Henrik Nordstrom]

On Sun, 2 Oct 2005, Jean-Christian de Rivaz wrote:

> It's already the case with at least my proposed patch. I have't tested the 
> patch written by Henrik Nordstrom or Lars Munch but it's likly that there 
> work the same way since this feature come from the Linux kernel tun code.

Indeed. It is impossible to support persistent TUN/TAP devices without not 
also supporting dynamically created devices.

> > In fact, if qemu supported both these things, then I don't see a reason for
> > -tun-fd at all (except for something like VDE).
>
> Agree, and a -vde option will go forward in this direction.

vde is not the only userspace switch available. Locking qemu to only vde 
would be bad. I then much prefer not having the builtin vde option or even 
the tun/tap open code and only keep -tun-fd.  (from -tun-fd all the others 
can be implemented by a wrapper opening the connections and handing them 
over to QEMU)

> So an open question: is the -tun and -vde options a good idea to cleanup the 
> network interface options?

No.

> To be clear, I don't propose to remove option at this point, but just to 
> make qemu more easy to use for simple and most common setup.

See the proposal from Fabrice some month ago on what the command line 
parameters should look like. Very nice imho. And very easy to extend with 
new modes (VDE, persistent TUN/TAP, whatever) without having to introduce 
new confusing options.

Regards
Henrik