On Mon, Sep 22, 2025 at 12:33:26PM +0100, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 19, 2025 at 04:07:19PM -0400, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> > On Fri, Sep 19, 2025 at 04:30:53PM +0200, Christian Speich wrote:
> > > This removes the change introduced in [1] that prevents the use of
> > > vhost-user-device and vhost-user-device-pci on unpatched QEMU builds.
> > > 
> > > [1]: 6275989647efb708f126eb4f880e593792301ed4
> > > 
> > > Signed-off-by: Christian Speich <[email protected]>
> > > ---
> > > vhost-user-device and vhost-user-device-pci started out as user
> > > creatable devices. This was changed in [1] when the vhost-user-base was
> > > introduced.
> > > 
> > > The reason given is to prevent user confusion. Searching qemu-discuss or
> > > google for "vhost-user-device" I've seen no confused users.
> > > 
> > > Our use case is to provide wifi emulation using "vhost-user-device-pci",
> > > which currently is working fine with the QEMU 9.0.2 present in Ubuntu
> > > 24.04. With newer QEMU versions we now need to patch, distribute and
> > > maintain our own QEMU packages, which is non-trivial.
> > > 
> > > So I want to propose lifting this restriction to make this feature
> > > usable without a custom QEMU.
> > > 
> > > [1]: 6275989647efb708f126eb4f880e593792301ed4
> > 
> > The confusion is after someone reuses the ID you are claiming without
> > telling anyone and then linux guests will start binding that driver to
> > your device.
> > 
> > 
> > We want people doing this kind of thing to *at a minimum*
> > go ahead and register a device id with the virtio TC,
> > but really to write and publish a spec.
> 
> Wanting people to register a device ID is a social problem and
> we're trying to apply a technical hammer to it, which is rarely
> an productive approach.
> 
> If we want to demonstrate that vhost-user-device is "risky", then
> how about we rename it to have an 'x-' prefix and thus disclaim
> any support for it, but none the less allow its use. Document it
> as an experimental device, and if it breaks, users get to keep
> both pieces.

Maybe with the insecure tag you are working on?
And disable in the default config?


> It seems like it would be useful before any virtio spec submission
> as a mechanism by which users can experiment to finese their ideas
> prior to getting to the point of needing to make a spec proposal.
> 
> With regards,
> Daniel
> -- 
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