Re: [RFC PATCH 00/10] Xen VMware tools support

From: Don Slutz <dslutz@verizon.com>
To: Ian Campbell <Ian.Campbell@citrix.com>
Cc: Keir Fraser <keir@xen.org>, Jun Nakajima <jun.nakajima@intel.com>,
	Stefano Stabellini <stefano.stabellini@eu.citrix.com>,
	Ian Jackson <ian.jackson@eu.citrix.com>,
	Eddie Dong <eddie.dong@intel.com>, Don Slutz <dslutz@verizon.com>,
	xen-devel@lists.xen.org, Jan Beulich <jbeulich@suse.com>,
	Boris Ostrovsky <boris.ostrovsky@oracle.com>,
	Suravee Suthikulpanit <suravee.suthikulpanit@amd.com>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 00/10] Xen VMware tools support
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2013 09:08:16 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <52B2FDD0.6030208@terremark.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <1387446639.9925.12.camel@kazak.uk.xensource.com>

On 12/19/13 04:50, Ian Campbell wrote:
> On Wed, 2013-12-18 at 19:46 -0500, Don Slutz wrote:
>> On 12/17/13 14:03, Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk wrote:
>>> On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 02:15:08PM -0500, Don Slutz wrote:
>>>> From: Don Slutz <dslutz@verizon.com>
>>>>
>>>> See
>>>>
>>>> http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1009458
>>> Can you say how this benefits Xen to detect this and take
>>> advantage of it? Or is this Xen emulating VMWare so to a guest
>>> it looks like its running under VMWare?
>> This is Xen emulating part of VMWare.  Some parts of guests will think
>> it is running on VMware.
> That doesn't answer the important part Konrad's question though: how
> this benefits Xen.
>
> A series like this should have a cover letter which explains what the
> feature is, what use case it solves, why this is a useful thing and why
> it is worth the burden of maintaining it going forward.
>
> Ian.
>
>
I see.  Some quick points that might help, I am working on a much better 
description.

This is a small part of the changes needed to allow running linux and 
windows (and others) guests that were built on VMware and run run them 
unchanged on Xen.

This small part is the start of Xen support of VMware backdoor io port 
which is how VMware tools (a standard addition installed on a guest) 
communicates to the hypervisor.

I picked this subset to start with because it only has changes in Xen.

Some of this code is already in QEMU and so KVM has some of this 
already.  QEMU supported backdoor commands include VMware mouse 
support.  A later patch set exists that links these changes, new code 
and Xen changes to QEMU to provide VMware mouse support under Xen.  The 
important part is that VMware mouse is an absolute position mouse and so 
network delays do not effect usage of the virtual mouse.

    -Don Slutz