[Spice-devel] spice vdagent protocol, was Re: [Qemu-devel] KVM call minutes for Jan 11

[Alon Levy]

On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 01:44:50PM -0600, Adam Litke wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-01-13 at 21:18 +0200, Alon Levy wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 09:01:34AM -0600, Adam Litke wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2011-01-11 at 20:33 +0200, Alon Levy wrote:
> > > > > Spice guest agent:
> > > > > - virt agent, matahari, spice agent...what is in spice agent?
> > > > > - spice char device
> > > > >   - mouse, copy 'n paste, screen resolution change
> > > > > - could be generic (at least input and copy/paste)
> > > > >   - send protocol details of what is being sent
> > > > > - need to look at how difficult it is to split it out from spice
> > > > >   (how to split out in qemu vs. libspice)
> > > > > - goal to converge on common framework
> > > > > - more discussion on char device vs. protocol
> > > > >   - eg. mouse_set breaks if mouse channel is part pv and part spice specific
> > > > > - Alon will send link to protocol and try to propose new interfaces
> > > > 
> > > > http://spice-space.org/page/Whiteboard/AgentProtocol
> > > > 
> > > > That's the corrent documentation. Notably the clipboard is a todo there, I'll
> > > > try to get that filled in. I'll continue this discussion on a separate thread later.
> > > 
> > > Thanks for sending this out Alon.  The use cases you have outlined are
> > > very similar to the ones we have for virtagent.  The main differences I
> > > can see so far are the the data encoding strategy and the spice agent's
> > > method for delivery of events (mouse, etc).
> > > 
> > Let me start by saying I'm not yet familiar with virtagent, I need to read
> > up on it (really didn't expect to try to merge with it at this point, not
> > that that isn't a good discussion).
> > 
> > > Virtagent implements an RPC interface and uses xmlrpc-c to encode data
> > > in XML.  This approach seems more general-purpose, extensible and easier
> > > to manage over the long term than relying on a custom binary
> > > representation.
> > > 
> > 
> > Agree with the benefits, but there are other alternatives like I outlined
> > in the thread that Gerd started, like a binary representation generated from
> > declarative description. Totally agree with using a single definition to
> > generate marshalling / demarshalling code. Not saying we can't work with
> > xmlrpc for qemu<->guest but for qemu<->client I think it is too wasteful.
> > 
> > > As for event delivery, virtagent does not yet have an interface to allow
> > > external programs to subscribe to events.  I am sure this can be done in
> > > a generic way that is backwards-compatible with the current spice
> > > architecture.  Such an interface should allow arbitrary programs to
> > > subscribe to events but have no dependencies on those programs.  I am
> > > not sure if something like D-Bus would be appropriate for Linux guests.
> > > We'd need to consider Windows too.  
> > > 
> > 
> > Really not sure what you mean by events here, maybe I missed something.
> 
> I was trying to get at the method by which a generic guest agent could
> forward things like mouse coordinates to Spice.  Unfortunately, I sent
> this out before I noticed the other thread which covered this topic
> well.
> 
> > > I see no reason why the core qemu use cases (shutdown, exec, copyfile)
> > > and the spice use cases (mouse, copy-paste, graphics reconfiguration)
> > > cannot (and should not) be satisfied by a single agent.  Going forward,
> > > I think we'd need to agree on the wire protocol and guest-side event
> > > subscription.
> > 
> > At first glance, i'd say:
> >  * development - how would we develop a shared agent? two forks and a upstream
> >   that no one cares about? shared repository? seems easier to me to use
> >   a shared protocol and separate agents. Also better bug wise (bug in our
> >   code doesn't bring down your agent) to have separate agents. Plugins are
> >   not any better bug wise (segfault is a segfault). Also languages become a
> >   problem (our agents are in C++/C atm win/lin). So in summary I think it
> >   is better to have a shared qemu code (this has to be a single exe) and
> >   protocol perhaps.
> 
> I think it is critical that we have a single shared agent.  The agent
> must be part of the default install of most future guests for any
> host->guest API to be useful.  I will defer to discussions in the main
> thread regarding the structure of the daemon(s).
> 

Having agents install by default in a guest is great, I guess it would be
easier to justify a single agent install then multiple. But it would probably
still have to be multiple packages, like your /lib/virtagent/actions.d scheme,
where there would be a packages for (talking linux distribution specific for
a second) virtagent-spice and virtagent-admin for instance, plus
a virtagent which contains the actual agent. But this is getting into the structure
of the daemon(s), so I guess better moved there?

> >  * security - we don't need our agent to be able to execute or to copy files
> >   or to shutdown, so we'd need some mechanism to turn those off. There is
> >   another different agent (going over virtio-serial too) used for RHEV
> >   which probably does need these kind of features, so maybe need to involve
> >   them in this discussion too. (RHEV isn't open source yet but aims to be
> >   AFAIK).
> 
> One idea that has been discussed is to restrict agent actions to
> programs/scripts that exist in an virtagent.d/ directory (similar to how
> udev rules are configured).  Virtagent could install a set of scripts
> in /lib/virtagent/actions.d/ which can be overridden (or disabled) by
> the user in /etc/virtagent/actions.d/.  If the 'shutdown' action is
> missing, then the agent will not be able to perform shutdowns.
> 
> -- 
> Thanks,
> Adam
>