[Xen-devel] Communicating with the Guest Os before the network comes up.

[Ligesh <xen@xxxxxxxxxx>]

 Hi folks,

  I would like to know if it is possible to add a mechanism to send a simple 
string into the Virtual Machine. For instance, in the case of Vmware, we can 
define a variable called as machine.id in the config file, and this can be 
accessed from inside the VM using the /etc/vmware/vmware-guestd on linux or 
VmwareService.exe on Windows. The main purpose of this is to setup static ip 
address for the Virtual Machine. What you do is:


  In the config file you define the variable:
  ----------
  machine.id = "Mtx <ipaddress>"
  ----------


  Now from inside the VM you can acess this machine.id by executing 
vmware-guestd

  ----------------
  $string = `vmware-guestd --cmd machine.id.get`
  $ip = `echo $string | cut -f 1`
  ifconfig eth0 $ip
  ----------------

 This is portable across platforms, and would actually help a lot in the 
management of the VM. Now, as far as remote management is concerned, we have to 
depend on the network to have any type of interaction with the VM, which is a 
serious limitation. With this mode, it becomes sort of a backup, since a wide 
variety of commands can be passed to a daemon that will start at the bootup. 
For instance, you can ask it to execute an arbitrary command at the bootup 
using this method, which can help in recovering the machine in case one of the 
network services fails.

 Thanks.
 
--
:: Ligesh :: http://lxlabs.com 



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