Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: [PATCH 0/3]: Add UUID command-line option

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 09:37:01AM -0500, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> Gleb Natapov wrote:
> >Hi Chris,
> >
> >On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 03:25:06PM +0200, Chris Lalancette wrote:
> >  
> >>All,
> >>     Attached is a three part patch series to implement a "-uuid" 
> >>     command-line
> >>option to qemu.  The original work for this was all done by Gleb Natapov; 
> >>since
> >>there hadn't seemed to be any activity on this since June, I picked up his
> >>patches and ran with them (original posting:
> >>http://www.archivum.info/address@hidden/2008-06/msg00167.html).  
> >>These
> >>patches are basically the same as his, just cleaned up according to 
> >>Anthony
> >>Liguori's feedback.
> >>    
> >Actually there was activity on this. I addressed Anthony's feedback and
> >reposted the patch series (I think even twice). Here is the last one:
> >http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2008-06/msg00448.html
> >http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2008-06/msg00442.html
> >http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2008-06/msg00443.html
> >http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2008-06/msg00444.html
> >http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2008-06/msg00445.html
> >http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2008-06/msg00446.html
> >
> >Fabrice said that he doesn't like vmware backdoor interface though
> >(http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2008-06/msg00487.html)
> >I asked what interface he wants to use for qemu/guest communication, but
> >he never replied to this :(
> >  
> 
> The backdoor interface is deprecated (from a VMware perspective) and is 
> pretty terrible.  I'll go through and do a more thorough review of the 
> patches Chris posted but one thing I already know I'd like to see the 
> UUID plumbed through the SMBIOS tables for x86.  That's a requirement in 
> my mind for adding a -uuid option.  I see no harm in also supporting the 
> backdoor interface but the primary way to expose a UUID should be SMBIOS.

I'd really welcome addition of SMBIOS support too - for x86 the UUID
in the SMBIOS tables, is the most effective way for a guest admin to
find their machine identify in a format that can be correlated with
the host machine by external admin tools. Xen has code for doing SMBIOS
tables that could be useful to anyone wanting to work on this. Though it
won't be a straight port since they integrate it with the HVM loader
firmware, the general data table setup code ought to be reusable, only
leaving the BIOS integration part.

Daniel
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