Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 00/20] Add an IPMI device to QEMU

[Andreas Färber]

Hi,

Am 05.11.2013 14:56, schrieb Michael S. Tsirkin:
> On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 05:07:56PM -0500, address@hidden wrote:
>> I have finally gotten some time to work on this, this series of
>> patches adds an IPMI interface to qemu.  The changes are roughly:
>>
>> patches 01-05 - Add the capability to have a chardev reconnect if
>> the connections fails.  This way, if using an external BMC, qemu
>> will detect the failure and periodically attempt to reconnect.
>> This also adds ways for the device code to get an event on a
>> disconnect and connect so it can handle it properly.  This is
>> probably useful for things besides IPMI.  There are also a few
>> small bugfixes in this.
>>
>> patches 06-14 - Add the IPMI device itself, with an ISA interface
>> for now (PCI and others can also be added easily).
>>
>> patches 15-18 - Add a way to dynamically add content to the ACPI
>> tables, and add the capability to add the IPMI information to the
>> table.
>>
>> Patches 19-20 - Add a way to dynamically add content to the SMBIOS
>> tables, and add an IPMI entry to the table.
>>
> 
> I was pointed at these patches as an example of useful
> functionality that's out of qemu merely for lack of review
> resources. I'd like to help.
> 
> Now that we have code to generate ACPI tables
> directly in qemu, this series can be rebased on top of
> that, with no need for new FW CFG entries or bios changes.
> 
> If you have the time, pls Cc me on patches and I'll try to
> help shepherd them upstream.

Me too, I have IPMI on my radar for 1.8/2.0.

Our use case would be using IPMI tools to boot/reboot/shutdown a guest
and to access its serial console as done for the physical hosts; we had
discussed in the past where to locate such a TCP server component,
whether in QEMU or libvirt - am I interpreting correctly that patch 11
is preparing an interface to have that as external process now? Or is it
hidden somewhere in patch 10 or is this unimplemented in this version?

Also, some of the IPMI acronyms in the commit messages (KCS, BT, ...)
could use some explanation in the next version. ;)

Regards,
Andreas

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