Subject: Re: [Alacrityvm-devel] [PATCH v3 3/6] vbus: add a "vbus-proxy" bus model for vbus_driver objects

From: "Michael S. Tsirkin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2009 23:35:22 +0300

On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 11:27:35AM -0700, Ira W. Snyder wrote:
> I haven't studied vhost-net very carefully yet. As soon as I saw the
> copy_(to|from)_user() I stopped reading, because it seemed useless for
> my case. I'll look again and try to find where vhost-net supports
> setting MAC addresses and other features.

vhost net doesn't do this at all. You bind raw socket to a network
device, and program that with usual userspace interfaces.

> Also, in my case I'd like to boot Linux with my rootfs over NFS. Is
> vhost-net capable of this?
> 
> I've had Arnd, BenH, and Grant Likely (and others, privately) contact me
> about devices they are working with that would benefit from something
> like virtio-over-PCI. I'd like to see vhost-net be merged with the
> capability to support my use case. There are plenty of others that would
> benefit, not just myself.
> 
> I'm not sure vhost-net is being written with this kind of future use in
> mind. I'd hate to see it get merged, and then have to change the ABI to
> support physical-device-to-device usage. It would be better to keep
> future use in mind now, rather than try and hack it in later.

I still need to think your usage over. I am not so sure this fits what
vhost is trying to do. If not, possibly it's better to just have a
separate driver for your device.

> Thanks for the comments.
> Ira