[Qemu-devel] [PATCH 0/3] Add dbus-vmstate

[Marc-André Lureau]

Hi,

With external processes or helpers participating to the VM support, it
becomes necessary to handle their migration. Various options exist to
transfer their state:
1) as the VM memory, RAM or devices (we could say that's how
   vhost-user devices can be handled today, they are expected to
   restore from ring state)
2) other "vmstate" (as with TPM emulator state blobs)
3) left to be handled by management layer

1) is not practical, since an external processes may legitimatelly
need arbitrary state date to back a device or a service, or may not
even have an associated device.

2) needs ad-hoc code for each helper, but is simple and working

3) is complicated for management layer, QEMU has the migration timing

The proposed "dbus-vmstate" object will connect to a given D-Bus
address, and save/load from org.qemu.VMState1 owners on migration.

Thus helpers can easily have their state migrated with QEMU, without
implementing ad-hoc support (such as done for TPM emulation)

I chose D-Bus as it is ubiquitous on Linux (it is systemd IPC), and
can be made to work on various other OSes. There are several
implementations and good bindings for various languages.
(the tests/dbus-vmstate-test.c is a good example of how simple
the implementation of services can be, even in C)

The D-Bus protocol can be made to work peer-to-peer, but the most
common and practical way is through a bus daemon. This also has the
advantage of increased debuggability (you can eavesdrop on the bus and
introspect it).

dbus-vmstate is put into use by the libvirt series "[PATCH 00/23] Use
a slirp helper process".

Marc-André Lureau (3):
  qemu-file: move qemu_{get,put}_counted_string() declarations
  tests: add qtest_set_exit_status()
  Add dbus-vmstate object

 MAINTAINERS                         |   6 +
 backends/Makefile.objs              |   4 +
 backends/dbus-vmstate.c             | 497 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 configure                           |   7 +
 docs/interop/dbus-vmstate.rst       |  64 ++++
 docs/interop/index.rst              |   1 +
 include/migration/qemu-file-types.h |   4 +
 migration/qemu-file.h               |   4 -
 tests/Makefile.include              |  18 +-
 tests/dbus-vmstate-test.c           | 387 ++++++++++++++++++++++
 tests/dbus-vmstate1.xml             |  12 +
 tests/libqtest.c                    |  41 +--
 tests/libqtest.h                    |   9 +
 13 files changed, 1030 insertions(+), 24 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 backends/dbus-vmstate.c
 create mode 100644 docs/interop/dbus-vmstate.rst
 create mode 100644 tests/dbus-vmstate-test.c
 create mode 100644 tests/dbus-vmstate1.xml

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2.22.0.214.g8dca754b1e