Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] Share Vmware communication port between devices

[Thomas Frey]

On 8/21/07, Anthony Liguori <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 2007-08-21 at 20:17 +0200, Hervé Poussineau wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > VMware registers the port 0x5658 to communicate between guest and host.
> > At the moment, vmmouse.c is the only one to use this communication channel,
> > so it registers the port. IMO, this design is not right because it will be
> > hard to implement other functionalities of VMware.
> >
> > I extracted non-mouse part from this file and created a framework for VMware
> > communication in a new file. Devices can then register for specific
> > commands, so communication port will be shared between devices.
> > I also added support for "Get RAM size" command. More commands will be added
> > later.
>
> What other things are used for this port and where is it documented?
> What is the "Get RAM size" command used by?
>
> AFAIK, the vmware tools have a EULA that prevents them from being used
> in QEMU guests.  Unless there's an open source driver that uses these
> commands, I don't see the use of supporting them if the drivers are
> restricted from being used within QEMU.

There are open source implementations for this interface. E.g. the
Bluebottle OS (ETH Zuerich) has such an implementation.
(In recent builds there are some installation issues on QEmu with ATA
detection, ask if you want to try. I can extract and upload/mail the
respective source if it is of any help)

--Thomas