Re: [Xen-users] Slackware 12 DomU NIC increments on each start

["Florian Heigl" <florian.heigl@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Andy,

2007/11/24, Andy Smith <andy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> Hi Florian,
>
> On Sat, Nov 24, 2007 at 01:22:24AM +0100, Florian Heigl wrote:
>
> [MAC address selection]
>
> > This is a functionality best placed with Xen
> > - as half of it is already there
> > - as xend is the best thing to query other members in
> > clustered/load-balanced setups
> > - as there is NO point in everyone being asked to handle it manually
> > or hack scripts
> > - as it will save time for everyone.
>
> I'd be happy with that as long as there is still a way to override
> it.  I have more than one dom0 on the same LAN so I need to keep my
> MAC address assignments in a database.  In theory one dom0 could be
> made to query all others, but I see the open source version of Xen
> to be just one (admittedly major) building block of a larger system
> and it does not need to do everything.

I agree on both points...
The easiest thing would be to have a "pluggable" script like, for
example, xen-block or network-bridge are called, or the way you select
different loaders in the domU config.

one could simply define mac_handling = auto

Having this script replacable would allow for useful extensions - i.e.
if someone uses dom0 firewalling for egress filtering the dom0 could
do an actual first dhcprequest and set up firewalling before the
(untrusted) domU is launched - just an example.

i'd say it's a good job for xend's to handle as with loadbalancing or
some other features the amount of dom0-dom0 xmlrpc communications will
probably increase anyway.
my feeling is the current approach is half-baked ... "if it generates
it, it should deal with it, too"

but easy management of such a feature (enable/disable, replace and
influence it's options) is definitely crucial, on the other hand i
think thats easy enough to accomplish

one could start with
mac_handler=/path/to/the/script/that/already/does/the/autogeneration
vif [ 'bridge=xxx','mac=auto,persistent' ]

then you can have scripts with backend support (xend, a textfile, a
database table from Enomalism), without backend support, with extra
functions (like the dhcp+firewall) example, and so on without changing
standard behaviour.


regards,
florian


-- 
'Sie brauchen sich um Ihre Zukunft keine Gedanken zu machen'

_______________________________________________
Xen-users mailing list
Xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users