From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Zachary Amsden Subject: Re: KVM usability Date: Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:13:20 -1000 Message-ID: <4B901460.9090709@redhat.com> References: <1267068445.1726.25.camel@localhost> <1267089644.12790.74.camel@laptop> <1267152599.1726.76.camel@localhost> <20100226090147.GH15885@elte.hu> <4B879A2F.50203@redhat.com> <20100226103545.GA7463@elte.hu> <4B87A6BF.3090301@redhat.com> <20100226111734.GE7463@elte.hu> <4B8813F2.8090208@redhat.com> <20100227105643.GA17425@elte.hu> <4B8BD9BA.6020601@codemonkey.ws> <1267524666.25158.38.camel@laptop> <1267732824.5322.57.camel@localhost.localdomain> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Peter Zijlstra , Anthony Liguori , Ingo Molnar , Avi Kivity , "Zhang, Yanmin" , ming.m.lin@intel.com, sheng.yang@intel.com, Jes Sorensen , KVM General , Gleb Natapov , Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo , Fr??d??ric Weisbecker , Thomas Gleixner , "H. Peter Anvin" , Arjan van de Ven , Cole Robinson To: Lucas Meneghel Rodrigues Return-path: Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([209.132.183.28]:25698 "EHLO mx1.redhat.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752292Ab0CDUOT (ORCPT ); Thu, 4 Mar 2010 15:14:19 -0500 In-Reply-To: <1267732824.5322.57.camel@localhost.localdomain> Sender: kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On 03/04/2010 10:00 AM, Lucas Meneghel Rodrigues wrote: > On Tue, 2010-03-02 at 11:11 +0100, Peter Zijlstra wrote: > >> On Mon, 2010-03-01 at 09:14 -0600, Anthony Liguori wrote: >> >>> The real >>> question to ask is, why are you using qemu directly instead of using >>> virt-manager? >>> >> Because I suspect Ingo, like me, is a command line user, launching a gui >> to start kvm when there is a kvm command around just sounds daft. >> >> Also, I just installed and tried it, virt-manager is a total piece of >> shit, >> > That statement is far from being fair. I use virt-manager quite a lot, > since I want to keep track of what's going on on KVM virtualization for > end users in Fedora. What's shipped with Fedora 12 is pretty decent in > many regards, but as in any other software there's plenty of room for > improvements. > The biggest problem with virt-manager isn't virt-manager, it's that it is trying to do a nearly intractable task. Because a qemu virtual machine is not a machine at all, just a disk image without the proper metadata to track the important properties of the machine, like what revision of PCI chipset, how many disk controllers the thing is using, what kind of graphics card, etc. These are all basic things that are left completely undefined by qemu's lack of a top-level configuration file, and it's an inexcusable disgrace. So virt-manager or any other management tool has the burden of creating and maintaining a bunch of metadata around this workhorse tool called qemu and invoking libvirt to figure out which set of 100,000 blasted command line options to pass on. That's why it falls short of expectations at times, not because virt-manager is crap, but because there is no well defined, well designed infrastructure for it to manage and the ad-hoc solution here is total crap. Zach