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Daniel P. Berrangé b7ed8ce981 remote: introduce virtproxyd daemon to handle IP connectivity
The libvirtd daemon provides the traditional libvirt experience where
all the drivers are in a single daemon, and is accessible over both
local UNIX sockets and remote IP sockets.

In the new world we're having a set of per-driver daemons which will
primarily be accessed locally via their own UNIX sockets.

We still, however, need to allow for case of applications which will
connect to libvirt remotely. These remote connections can be done as
TCP/TLS sockets, or by SSH tunnelling to the UNIX socket.

In the later case, the old libvirt.so clients will only know about
the path to the old libvirtd socket /var/run/libvirt/libvirt-sock,
and not the new driver sockets /var/run/libvirt/virtqemud-sock.

It is also not desirable to expose the main driver specific daemons
over IP directly to minimize their attack service.

Thus the virtproxyd daemon steps into place, to provide TCP/TLS sockets,
and back compat for the old libvirtd UNIX socket path(s). It will then
forward all RPC calls made to the appropriate driver specific daemon.

Essentially it is equivalent to the old libvirtd with absolutely no
drivers registered except for the remote driver (and other stateless
drivers in libvirt.so).

We could have modified libvirtd so none of the drivers are registed
to get the same end result. We could even add a libvirtd.conf parameter
to control whether the drivers are loaded to enable users to switch back
to the old world if we discover bugs in the split-daemon model. Using a
new daemon though has some advantages

 - We can make virtproxyd and the virtXXXd per-driver daemons all
   have "Conflicts: libvirtd.service" in their systemd unit files.
   This will guarantee that libvirtd is never started at the same
   time, as this would result in two daemons running the same driver.
   Fortunately drivers use locking to protect themselves, but it is
   better to avoid starting a daemon we know will conflict.

 - It allows us to break CLI compat to remove the --listen parameter.
   Both listen_tcp and listen_tls parameters in /etc/libvirtd/virtd.conf
   will default to zero. Either TLS or TCP can be enabled exclusively
   though virtd.conf without requiring the extra step of adding --listen.

 - It allows us to set a strict SELinux policy over virtproxyd. For
   back compat the libvirtd policy must continue to allow all drivers
   to run. We can't easily give a second policy to libvirtd which
   locks it down. By introducing a new virtproxyd we can set a strict
   policy for that daemon only.

 - It gets rid of the weird naming of having a daemon with "lib" in
   its name. Now all normal daemons libvirt ships will have "virt"
   as their prefix not "libvirt".

 - Distros can more easily choose their upgrade path. They can
   ship both sets of daemons in their packages, and choose to
   either enable libvirtd, or enable the per-driver daemons and
   virtproxyd out of the box. Users can easily override this if
   desired by just tweaking which systemd units are active.

After some time we can deprecate use of libvirtd and after some more
time delete it entirely, leaving us in a pretty world filled with
prancing unicorns.

The main downside with introducing a new daemon, and with the
per-driver daemons in general, is figuring out the correct upgrade
path.

The conservative option is to leave libvirtd running if it was
an existing installation. Only use the new daemons & virtproxyd
on completely new installs.

The aggressive option is to disable libvirtd if already running
and activate all the new daemons.

Reviewed-by: Andrea Bolognani <abologna@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Christophe de Dinechin <dinechin@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
2019-08-09 14:06:31 +01:00
.ctags.d maint: Add support for .ctags.d 2019-05-31 17:54:28 +02:00
.gnulib@c8e2eee548 maint: Update to latest gnulib 2019-08-08 07:31:03 -05:00
build-aux build: use @CONFIG@ instead of ::CONFIG:: in augeas tests 2019-08-09 14:06:31 +01:00
docs docs: formatdomain: explain host-model/host-passthrough requirements 2019-08-09 10:55:59 +02:00
examples examples: Group all C programs together 2019-06-03 17:27:43 +02:00
gnulib maint: Fix VPATH build 2019-01-07 21:56:16 -06:00
include/libvirt backup: Introduce virDomainCheckpoint APIs 2019-07-26 16:48:58 -05:00
m4 build: bump min required gcc to 4.8 2019-08-07 14:26:12 +01:00
po po: refresh translations from zanata 2019-07-30 12:43:31 +01:00
src remote: introduce virtproxyd daemon to handle IP connectivity 2019-08-09 14:06:31 +01:00
tests qemu: Pass correct qemuCaps to virDomainDeviceDefPostParse 2019-08-09 13:55:54 +02:00
tools build: don't hardcode /etc in the config related files 2019-08-09 14:06:31 +01:00
.color_coded.in Add color_coded support 2017-05-09 09:51:11 +02:00
.ctags ctags: Generate tags for headers, i.e. function prototypes 2018-09-18 14:21:33 +02:00
.dir-locals.el build: avoid tabs that failed syntax-check 2012-09-06 09:43:46 -06:00
.gitignore remote: introduce virtproxyd daemon to handle IP connectivity 2019-08-09 14:06:31 +01:00
.gitlab-ci.yml gitlab: Perform some builds on Debian 10 2019-07-11 15:03:39 +02:00
.gitmodules gnulib: switch to use https:// instead of git:// protocol 2018-03-19 16:32:34 +00:00
.gitpublish git: add config file telling git-publish how to send patches 2018-04-23 11:36:09 +01:00
.mailmap mailmap: Remove some duplicates 2019-06-07 13:18:08 +02:00
.travis.yml travis: put macOS script inline in the macOS matrix entry 2019-04-11 18:38:56 +01:00
.ycm_extra_conf.py.in Add YouCompleteMe support 2017-05-09 09:51:11 +02:00
ABOUT-NLS po: provide custom make rules for po file management 2018-04-19 10:35:58 +01:00
AUTHORS.in AUTHORS: Add Katerina Koukiou 2018-07-17 17:01:19 +02:00
COPYING maint: follow recommended practice for using LGPL 2013-05-20 14:15:21 -06:00
COPYING.LESSER maint: Remove control characters from LGPL license file 2015-09-25 09:16:24 +02:00
ChangeLog maint: Stop generating ChangeLog from git 2019-04-03 09:45:25 +02:00
Makefile.am Don't include Makefile.ci in Makefile.am 2019-05-10 09:12:52 +02:00
Makefile.ci ci: Update image list 2019-07-11 15:03:37 +02:00
Makefile.nonreentrant Remove backslash alignment attempts 2017-11-03 13:24:12 +01:00
README Provide a useful README file 2017-05-22 17:01:37 +01:00
README-hacking docs: update all GIT repo examples to use https:// protocol 2018-03-21 14:48:01 +00:00
README.md README: fix license typo 2019-07-25 09:21:28 -06:00
autogen.sh po: provide custom make rules for po file management 2018-04-19 10:35:58 +01:00
bootstrap maint: update gnulib for syntax-check on BSD 2019-01-07 13:54:07 -06:00
bootstrap.conf maint: Stop generating ChangeLog from git 2019-04-03 09:45:25 +02:00
cfg.mk tools: avoid accidentally using files from gnulib 2019-08-08 13:32:02 +01:00
config-post.h nss: only link to yajl library and nothing else 2019-08-07 16:54:02 +01:00
configure.ac build: drop libvirt setuid library build 2019-08-07 16:54:01 +01:00
gitdm.config gitdm: Add gitdm configuration 2019-06-07 13:18:14 +02:00
libvirt-admin.pc.in Add libvirt-admin library 2015-06-16 13:46:20 +02:00
libvirt-lxc.pc.in Add pkg-config files for libvirt-qemu & libvirt-lxc 2014-06-23 16:17:27 +01:00
libvirt-qemu.pc.in Add pkg-config files for libvirt-qemu & libvirt-lxc 2014-06-23 16:17:27 +01:00
libvirt.pc.in Add pkg-config files for libvirt-qemu & libvirt-lxc 2014-06-23 16:17:27 +01:00
libvirt.spec.in remote: introduce virtproxyd daemon to handle IP connectivity 2019-08-09 14:06:31 +01:00
mingw-libvirt.spec.in backup: Introduce virDomainCheckpoint APIs 2019-07-26 16:48:58 -05:00
run.in run: Don't export unnecessary paths 2019-03-15 11:50:23 +01:00

README.md

Build Status CII Best Practices

Libvirt API for virtualization

Libvirt provides a portable, long term stable C API for managing the virtualization technologies provided by many operating systems. It includes support for QEMU, KVM, Xen, LXC, bhyve, Virtuozzo, VMware vCenter and ESX, VMware Desktop, Hyper-V, VirtualBox and the POWER Hypervisor.

For some of these hypervisors, it provides a stateful management daemon which runs on the virtualization host allowing access to the API both by non-privileged local users and remote users.

Layered packages provide bindings of the libvirt C API into other languages including Python, Perl, PHP, Go, Java, OCaml, as well as mappings into object systems such as GObject, CIM and SNMP.

Further information about the libvirt project can be found on the website:

https://libvirt.org

License

The libvirt C API is distributed under the terms of GNU Lesser General Public License, version 2.1 (or later). Some parts of the code that are not part of the C library may have the more restrictive GNU General Public License, version 2.0 (or later). See the files COPYING.LESSER and COPYING for full license terms & conditions.

Installation

Libvirt uses the GNU Autotools build system, so in general can be built and installed with the usual commands. For example, to build in a manner that is suitable for installing as root, use:

$ ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var
$ make
$ sudo make install

While to build & install as an unprivileged user

$ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/usr
$ make
$ make install

The libvirt code relies on a large number of 3rd party libraries. These will be detected during execution of the configure script and a summary printed which lists any missing (optional) dependencies.

Contributing

The libvirt project welcomes contributions in many ways. For most components the best way to contribute is to send patches to the primary development mailing list. Further guidance on this can be found on the website:

https://libvirt.org/contribute.html

Contact

The libvirt project has two primary mailing lists:

Further details on contacting the project are available on the website:

https://libvirt.org/contact.html