[GSoC 2010] Pass-through filesystem support.

[Mohammed Gamal <m.gamal005@gmail.com>]

Hi,
Now that Cam is almost done with his ivshmem patches, I was thinking
of another idea for GSoC which is improving the pass-though
filesystems.
I've got some questions on that:

1- What does the community prefer to use and improve? CIFS, 9p, or
both? And which is better taken up for GSoC.

2- With respect to CIFS. I wonder how the shares are supposed to be
exposed to the guest. Should the Samba server be modified to be able
to use unix domain sockets instead of TCP ports and then QEMU
communicating on these sockets. With that approach, how should the
guest be able to see the exposed share? And what is the problem of
using Samba with TCP ports?

3- In addition, I see the idea mentions that some Windows code needs
to be written to use network shares on a special interface. What's
that interface? And what's the nature of that Windows code? (a driver
a la "guest additions"?)

Regards,
Mohammed