Re: Serial connection between guests

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

 



On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 04:28:46PM -0300, Marcelo Ricardo Leitner wrote:
Hi,

(I'm not subscribed to the list, please keep me on Cc)

I'm attempting to get a serial link between two guests, same hypervisor.
The only practical way I could find is to add a serial port using a pty
to a guest and then manually connecting to the serial (console in my
case) of the other guest using socat in the hypervisor.

Then it made me think.. we could have this implemented at libvirt level.
We could have a serial port on which we choose pty, udp, tcp, etc, and
also a serial port from another guest, so that libvirt would handle
socat start/stop automatically as both guests come up/down. Maybe
libvirt could even do something smarter than that, maybe it can avoid
socat somehow.


You can have one domain with serial port that will listen on some
interface (unix socket, ip and port, whatever) and then have the
second one connect to it.  That could be done for example like this:

XML snippet of device for domain A:
 <serial type='file'>
   <source mode='bind' path='/tmp/tahi.sock'/>
   <target port='1'/>
 </serial>

XML snippet of device for domain B:
 <serial type='file'>
   <source mode='connect' path='/tmp/tahi.sock'/>
   <target port='1'/>
 </serial>

This way you need to make sure domain A is started when you are
starting domain B, so it can connect to the socket that was created by
domain A.  If you don't want to depend on the order of domains being
started, you can use for example socat for that:

XML snippet of device for domain A:
 <serial type='file'>
   <source mode='bind' path='/tmp/tahi-domA.sock'/>
   <target port='1'/>
 </serial>

XML snippet of device for domain B:
 <serial type='file'>
   <source mode='bind' path='/tmp/tahi-domB.sock'/>
   <target port='1'/>
 </serial>

And then run socat as:
 socat unix:/tmp/tahi-domA.sock unix:/tmp/tahi-domB.sock

For more details on how this works and what you can use, see the
documentation [1].  Beware that if it's the only serial port n the
guest, it will become a console, so you might want to add it instead
of modifying an existing one.

Also, the examples are done without any security labels in mind.  If
you use SELinux, for example, you'll probably need to adjust the
<seclabel/> for the sockets, see the docs [2] for details.


Martin

[1] https://libvirt.org/formatdomain.html#elementCharChannel
[2] https://libvirt.org/formatdomain.html#seclabel

What do you think? My usage is for virtualizing TAHI:
http://networktest.sourceforge.net/usage.html
I need 2 ethernet links plus a serial one, which TAHI can't break while
running the tests.

I didn't think this regarding multi-platform & all.. just sharing the
idea/need.

Thanks,
Marcelo

--
libvir-list mailing list
libvir-list@xxxxxxxxxx
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libvir-list

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

--
libvir-list mailing list
libvir-list@xxxxxxxxxx
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libvir-list

[Index of Archives]     [Virt Tools]     [Libvirt Users]     [Lib OS Info]     [Fedora Users]     [Fedora Desktop]     [Fedora SELinux]     [Big List of Linux Books]     [Yosemite News]     [KDE Users]     [Fedora Tools]