A bridge network for QEMU VMs

A bridge network for QEMU VMs

[Fabio Natali]

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

Re: A bridge network for QEMU VMs

[David Larsson]

Hi,

There is an openvswitch service that might be useful. Marius used it when showing how to setup ganeti on Guix here: <https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2020/running-a-ganeti-cluster-on-guix/>

I have a Ganeti cluster myself and occasionally I have run some manual openvswitch commands for VM's not managed by ganeti which I think could have been declared similarly to whats done in the blog post if u want it to be declarative.


Regards,
David


On June 11, 2024 1:52:34 PM GMT+02:00, Fabio Natali <me@fabionatali.com> wrote:
>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

Re: A bridge network for QEMU VMs

[Sergey Trofimov]

Hi, I've made a shepherd service for that:
https://github.com/sarg/dotfiles/blob/c3d9fe10f625e0434301c1c55890579a73919b52/guix/hass.scm#L27-L49

Re: A bridge network for QEMU VMs

[Fabio Natali]

On 2024-06-11, 22:50 +0200, Sergey Trofimov <sarg@sarg.org.ru> wrote:
> Hi, I've made a shepherd service for that:
> https://github.com/sarg/dotfiles/blob/c3d9fe10f625e0434301c1c55890579a73919b52/guix/hass.scm#L27-L49

Hey Sergey,

This is brilliant, thanks. Perhaps not as clean as if done natively via
the 'static-networking-service-type', but it works perfectly for me for
the time being.

Thank you!! F.