Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: Access to the host filesystem

[Grzegorz Kulewski]

I vote for option 1.

Why:
- configuration of Samba or NFS or CIFS is not so complicated, I think
- Windows guests will not need any configuration probably
- You cannot implement all protocols
- implementing that will be time consuming and will not allow developers 
focus on more important things
- this is code duplication with kernel/samba/NFS
- security problems and need for updates and maintaining the code

I know that in VMWare there is such utility and is not working for me 
correctly (it hangs/hangs the windows/stops responding/etc.). So I have 
bad experiencess...

I you configure the host in standard way, you can fully customize your 
settings and achieve stability, reliability and security of the newest 
versions of the original implementations.

That is what I think...


Grzegorz Kulewski


On Fri, 20 Feb 2004, John Davidorff Pell wrote:

> I vote for option 3, as it is the simplest and would work almost 
> universally. the M$ OSes would need the add-on, but that's the price 
> you pay for running windoze. Option 1 will only work if networking is 
> running properly in the guest *and* in the host, so it is concievable 
> that it won't work at all at times, and option 3 also has some 
> guest-networking-related issues. option 2 requires guest os drivers, 
> which might be hard to get.
> 
> Perhaps a combination of option 2 and 3. A special custom network card 
> that does only NFS (i'm thinking not even TCP/IP, but that might be 
> more work than its worth, and require drivers again...). Maybe just an 
> extra IDE controler (no extra drivers) and the host drives (or 
> host-based "shares") show up as drives/partitions?
> 
> JP
> 
> Fabrice Wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I wonder what would be the best way to access to the host filesystem,
> > especially with the Linux, MSDOS/FreeDos and Windows guest OSes.
> >
> > Here are my thoughts:
> >
> > 1) Do nothing and just use the network with NFS or Samba host servers.
> > It is the easiest solution but it requires a complicated host and guest
> > configuration.
> >
> > 2) Add a hardware device in QEMU giving access to the host filesystem
> > with specific commands such as "open", "read" and "close" working by
> > using DMA in physical guest memory. Then by reusing the user mode Linux
> > "hostfs" filesystem, it would be easy to add access to the host
> > filesystem. By reusing the dosemu "MFS" driver, it would also be
> > possible to do the same as dosemu to access to an host DOS tree.
> >
> > 3) Add a tiny NFS server in QEMU so that no host configuration is
> > needed. Then only NFS drivers are needed in the guest OS.
> >
> > Any comments ?
> >
> > Fabrice.
> 
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