Re: [PATCH 00/11] 9p: Add support for Darwin

[Will Cohen]

Correct, sorry for the imprecise language. The use case being contemplated is limited to Linux as the guest side, specifically for cross-platform tools where the macOS implementation consists of integrating a Linux VM via QEMU.

NixOS (updater of the original patch, https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/122420) would be able to use this to provide macOS support via a VM.

Lima and Podman as containerization alternatives to Docker would like to performantly mount volumes between macOS users and their respective VMs. Lima currently accomplishes this via sshfs, but would like to move to 9p for stability/performance reasons (https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/issues/20). Podman has yet to fully settle on an implementation at all due to similar outstanding concerns, but the furthest along proposed implementation choice has been 9pfs as well (https://github.com/containers/podman/pull/11454), pending adoption of such functionality in QEMU upstream.

On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 8:55 AM Christian Schoenebeck <qemu_oss@crudebyte.com> wrote:

On Donnerstag, 14. Oktober 2021 14:22:19 CEST Will Cohen wrote:
> Correct. It's been tested and functions when applied to QEMU master, with
> host running macOS Big Sur 11.6 (personal machine) using client 9p2000.L
> (taking a cue from the guest mounting instructions on
> https://wiki.qemu.org/Documentation/9psetup).

So it was the Linux kernel's 9p client on guest side with 9p 'local' fs driver
and 9p transport driver was 'virtio-pci'.

I was just wondering if somebody already bothered for macOS being the guest,
because that use case is a bit more challenging, especially with macOS 11 and
higher. But I see that's nothing you were into.

> On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 7:57 AM Christian Schoenebeck <
>
> qemu_oss@crudebyte.com> wrote:
> > On Donnerstag, 14. Oktober 2021 12:48:55 CEST Will Cohen wrote:
> > > Many thanks for all the clarifications — it’s my first time using
> > > git-send-email and first time with mailing-list-based devel workflows.
> >
> > Will
> >
> > > adjust accordingly, work through gitlab, and eventually resend via
> > > git-publish as v2.
> >
> > So the intended use case is macOS being host.
> >
> > Has this been tested, and if yes, using which 9p client and which macOS
> > version?
> >
> > Best regards,
> > Christian Schoenebeck