A bridge network for QEMU VMs

[Fabio Natali <me@fabionatali.com>]

Hi,

I'd like to set up a server's network so as to have:

- a bridge interface,
- the real Ethernet interface to be associated to the bridge.

Among other things, this setup makes it possible to use QEMU in "bridge
networking" mode, i.e. to have QEMU VMs to also connect to the bridge
and become reachable as ordinary machines in the LAN.

The Cookbook has a pretty thorough section⁰ on how to achieve
this. However, it makes use of NetworkManager, which makes things rather
stateful and can't be configured declaratively, if I understand it
correctly? I think I'd have a preference for
'static-networking-service-type' instead.

However, when it comes to 'static-networking-service-type', I found this
other thread¹ which indicates some missing pieces in Guix's
'network-link' and 'network-set-up/linux'. Looking at the Guix logs, I
don't think there has been any further development on this since the
thread.

Anyone else who has encountered the same issue? Any other possibility I
should take into account? Could it be worth to re-consider the
NetworkManager approach? Should I think of a little patch that adds the
missing functionality to 'static-networking-service-type'?

Thanks, cheers, Fabio.


⁰ https://guix.gnu.org/cookbook/en/html_node/Network-bridge-for-QEMU.html
¹ https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2023-03/msg00269.html


-- 
Fabio Natali
https://fabionatali.com