Bug 1121797

Summary: Media Transfer Protocol (usb-mtp) support for KVM guests - virt-install
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Reporter: Karen Noel <knoel>
Component: virt-managerAssignee: Virtualization Maintenance <virt-maint>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact: Virtualization Bugs <virt-bugs>
Severity: unspecified Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 8.1CC: berrange, crobinso, gscrivan, jsuchane, juzhou, libvirt-maint, mzhan, phrdina, ribarry, tzheng, virt-bugs, virt-maint
Target Milestone: rcKeywords: FutureFeature, Triaged
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: Unspecified   
OS: Unspecified   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Enhancement
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: 1121781 Environment:
Last Closed: 2020-09-10 05:45:07 UTC Type: Feature Request
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On: 1121780, 1121781    
Bug Blocks: 1401400    

Description Karen Noel 2014-07-21 22:02:33 UTC 
+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #1121781 +++

+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #1121780 +++

Description of problem:

Export host file systems to KVM guests using MTP (Media Transfer Protocol), by using the usb-mtp device in QEMU.

The virtfs project, led by IBM, was never included in RHEL/KVM. It cannot be used as a general passthrough file system due to lack of Windows guest support. There was also some other concerns listed in BZ 729054, including the move MTP as an alternative.
Comment 16 Pavel Hrdina 2020-09-10 05:45:07 UTC 
The implementation in QEMU is not complete and there is a better replacement, virtio-fs, which is already implemented in libvirt as well.
Comment 17 Daniel Berrangé 2020-09-10 07:32:53 UTC 
virtio-fs is not a great alternative for a number of reasons

  - it lacks platform portability, most especially to Windows. 
  - it only works with the systemd libvirtd as it can't run unprivileged yet
  - in the guest it also requires privileged, ,manual admin setup.

Essentally virtio-fs is fine for Linux server workloads. 

USB MTP is better for cross OS portable, desktop virt file sharing from the host which is arguably more important for virt-manaager.