[Qemu-devel] Re: Re: QEMU GUI-Frontend based on Libvert API

[Anthony Liguori]

On Sun, 23 Jul 2006 12:39:29 +0100, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
>> I have toyed around with the idea of writing an XML-RPC front-end to
>> QEMU (with the idea of bridging the gap for libvirt).  DV also had a
>> patch floating around to add a socket management interface to QEMU
>> (although now there is a TCP character device so I presume his patch is
>> unnecessary).
> 
> If there was a way to enumerate all running QEMU instances on a machine in
> a reasonably fast manner (ie, not reading every single /proc/PID entry),
> the existing QEMU monitor interface exposes enough functionality to
> support most of  libvirt API.

The approach I took was to have all qemu spawning be done through a single
daemon that could keep track of running instances.  In the general case, I
don't think there's a way to do it.

Plus, you want to make sure that each instance has the monitor on some
reconnectable interface.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori

> So the main questions are how to enumerate
> QEMU instances & how to connect to the monitor - UNIX, TCP, or XML-RPC are
> all possible options with plus/minuses. UNIX is nice because you can
> manage security with simple file permissions on the socket. TCP/XML-RPC is
> nice because you can manage VMs remotely - but you'd need to do some kind
> of sensible auth scheme in remote case - unlike Xen which allows anyone to
> connect :-(
> 
> Regards,
> Dan,