Why is finding windows spice drivers so hard?

[Alon Levy]

Sorry for not making this a reply to the original (I hope the subject will be
enough), not sure how to do that. Reply inline.

On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 12:04:05PM +0200, Dor Laor wrote:
>  On 12/14/2010 01:39 PM, Glauber Costa wrote:
>  >People,
>  >
>  >There is this guy - actually, a very active guy that helps us a lot in
>  >terms of bug reporting and testing - in fedora-virt asking a couple of
>  >questions about spice that are left unanswered.
>  >
>  >Can some of our spice folks take a look and it and try to give him a
>  >hand?
>  >
>  
>  Adding spice-list
>  
>  >
>  >[fedora-virt] Why is finding windows spice drivers so hard?.eml
>  >
>  >Subject:
>  >[fedora-virt] Why is finding windows spice drivers so hard?
>  >From:
>  >Tom Horsley <horsley1953(a)gmail.com&gt;
>  >Date:
>  >Sat, 11 Dec 2010 18:09:14 -0500
>  >
>  >To:
>  >Fedora Virt <virt(a)lists.fedoraproject.org&gt;
>  >
>  >
>  >Is there some conspiracy to obfuscate the best place to
>  >find windows guest spice drivers? People seem to invent
>  >random names for the files, so you don't know if
>  >it is an update of something with a old name or not.
>  >Sometimes there are .iso files, sometimes .zip. Most of
>  >the web pages offering downloads don't have dates,
>  >so you can't tell which are the latest versions. 
Enough conspiracies right now, this isn't another one.

>  >
>  >Why is this so hard?
>  >
>  >Are the spice-space.org versions on the downloads
>  >page always the best versions to grab? And if so,
>  >what the heck do I actually need? I know qxl
>  >is for video, but what the heck do the other
>  >windows binaries actually do? Why do I want them?
>  > 
Yes, spice-space.org/download.html is the canonical location.
The source repositories are hosted by freedesktop, also linked
from spice-space.org, including the qxl windows driver.

Latest windows driver is http://www.spice-space.org/download/binaries/qxl-win32-0.6.1.zip

The rest of the windows binaries:
 client - the client.
 virtio-serial driver - for agent (copy-paste, better mouse, automatic resize for full
screen,
  wan performance by guest changes)
 guest agent - the agent to run in the windows guest for said features
 libraries - only required if you want to build from source. A collection of all the
dependencies of
  the client (to build the driver you need only the spice-protocol and windows kernel
driver stack).

>  >I found a file named kvm-guest-drivers-windows-061510.iso
>  >when testing a while back and it seemed to work, but
>  >also seems likely to be pretty old these days. 
Where is that from?

>  >_______________________________________________
>  >virt mailing list
>  &gt;virt(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  >https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/virt
>   

----- End forwarded message -----

[Andrew Cathrow]

----- Original Message -----
>  From: "Alon Levy" <alevy(a)redhat.com&gt;
>  To: virt(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2010 6:35:47 AM
>  Subject: [fedora-virt] Why is finding windows spice drivers so hard?
>  Sorry for not making this a reply to the original (I hope the subject
>  will be
>  enough), not sure how to do that. Reply inline.
>  
>  On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 12:04:05PM +0200, Dor Laor wrote:
>  > On 12/14/2010 01:39 PM, Glauber Costa wrote:
>  > >People,
>  > >
>  > >There is this guy - actually, a very active guy that helps us a lot
>  > >in
>  > >terms of bug reporting and testing - in fedora-virt asking a couple
>  > >of
>  > >questions about spice that are left unanswered.
>  > >
>  > >Can some of our spice folks take a look and it and try to give him
>  > >a
>  > >hand?
>  > >
>  >
>  > Adding spice-list
>  >
>  > >
>  > >[fedora-virt] Why is finding windows spice drivers so hard?.eml
>  > >
>  > >Subject:
>  > >[fedora-virt] Why is finding windows spice drivers so hard?
>  > >From:
>  > >Tom Horsley <horsley1953(a)gmail.com&gt;
>  > >Date:
>  > >Sat, 11 Dec 2010 18:09:14 -0500
>  > >
>  > >To:
>  > >Fedora Virt <virt(a)lists.fedoraproject.org&gt;
>  > >
>  > >
>  > >Is there some conspiracy to obfuscate the best place to
>  > >find windows guest spice drivers? People seem to invent
>  > >random names for the files, so you don't know if
>  > >it is an update of something with a old name or not.
>  > >Sometimes there are .iso files, sometimes .zip. Most of
>  > >the web pages offering downloads don't have dates,
>  > >so you can't tell which are the latest versions.
>  
>  Enough conspiracies right now, this isn't another one.
>  
>  > >
>  > >Why is this so hard?
>  > >
>  > >Are the spice-space.org versions on the downloads
>  > >page always the best versions to grab? And if so,
>  > >what the heck do I actually need? I know qxl
>  > >is for video, but what the heck do the other
>  > >windows binaries actually do? Why do I want them?
>  > >
>  
>  Yes, spice-space.org/download.html is the canonical location.
>  The source repositories are hosted by freedesktop, also linked
>  from spice-space.org, including the qxl windows driver.
>  
>  Latest windows driver is
>  http://www.spice-space.org/download/binaries/qxl-win32-0.6.1.zip
>  
>  The rest of the windows binaries:
>  client - the client.
>  virtio-serial driver - for agent (copy-paste, better mouse, automatic
>  resize for full screen,
>  wan performance by guest changes)
>  guest agent - the agent to run in the windows guest for said features
>  libraries - only required if you want to build from source. A
>  collection of all the dependencies of
>  the client (to build the driver you need only the spice-protocol and
>  windows kernel driver stack).
>   
Long term Red Hat will publish a signed, WHQL'd Spice driver for the community.
There's some work we have to do first including licensing - there's some
challenges involved, for example GPL is prohibited from Microsoft WHQL program so we have
to jump through a few hoops.



>  > >I found a file named kvm-guest-drivers-windows-061510.iso
>  > >when testing a while back and it seemed to work, but
>  > >also seems likely to be pretty old these days.
>  
>  Where is that from?
>  
>  > >_______________________________________________
>  > >virt mailing list
>  > &gt;virt(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  > >https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/virt
>  >
>  
>  
>  ----- End forwarded message -----
>  _______________________________________________
>  virt mailing list
>  virt(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/virt

[Tom Horsley]

On Wed, 15 Dec 2010 13:35:47 +0200
Alon Levy wrote:

>  The rest of the windows binaries:
>   client - the client.
>   virtio-serial driver - for agent (copy-paste, better mouse, automatic resize for full
> screen,
>    wan performance by guest changes) 
I finally figured that out, but finding an example of the qemu
arguments required to actually create a proper virtio serial
device for the agent to use was also a major challenge. I did
finally stumble across a wiki page with an example I copied
by rote.

>   guest agent - the agent to run in the windows guest for said
> features
>   libraries - only required if you want to build from source. A collection of all the
> dependencies of
>    the client (to build the driver you need only the spice-protocol and windows kernel
> driver stack).
>  
>  > >I found a file named kvm-guest-drivers-windows-061510.iso
>  > >when testing a while back and it seemed to work, but
>  > >also seems likely to be pretty old these days.  
>  
>  Where is that from? 
There was a fedora 13 directory I found a pointer to somewhere:

http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/alt/virtio-win/13/images/bin/

There is a similar directory with a '14' instead of a '13', but
it didn't seem to contain any drivers :-).

[Justin Forbes]

On Wed, 2010-12-15 at 07:33 -0500, Tom Horsley wrote:
>  On Wed, 15 Dec 2010 13:35:47 +0200
>  Alon Levy wrote:
>  
>  > The rest of the windows binaries:
>  >  client - the client.
>  >  virtio-serial driver - for agent (copy-paste, better mouse, automatic resize for
> full screen,
>  >   wan performance by guest changes)
>  
>  I finally figured that out, but finding an example of the qemu
>  arguments required to actually create a proper virtio serial
>  device for the agent to use was also a major challenge. I did
>  finally stumble across a wiki page with an example I copied
>  by rote.
>  
>  >  guest agent - the agent to run in the windows guest for said features
>  >  libraries - only required if you want to build from source. A collection of all the
> dependencies of
>  >   the client (to build the driver you need only the spice-protocol and windows
> kernel driver stack).
>  > 
>  > > >I found a file named kvm-guest-drivers-windows-061510.iso
>  > > >when testing a while back and it seemed to work, but
>  > > >also seems likely to be pretty old these days.  
>  > 
>  > Where is that from?
>  
>  There was a fedora 13 directory I found a pointer to somewhere:
>  
>  http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/alt/virtio-win/13/images/bin/
>  
>  There is a similar directory with a '14' instead of a '13', but
>  it didn't seem to contain any drivers :-). 
The 14 directory does indeed contain drivers, virtio-win-1.1.11-0.iso. 

Justin

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 07:33:29AM -0500, Tom Horsley wrote:
>  On Wed, 15 Dec 2010 13:35:47 +0200
>  Alon Levy wrote:
>  
>  > The rest of the windows binaries:
>  >  client - the client.
>  >  virtio-serial driver - for agent (copy-paste, better mouse, automatic resize for
> full screen,
>  >   wan performance by guest changes)
>  
>  I finally figured that out, but finding an example of the qemu
>  arguments required to actually create a proper virtio serial
>  device for the agent to use was also a major challenge. I did
>  finally stumble across a wiki page with an example I copied
>  by rote. 
In latest libvirt (not in Fedora 14 I don't think) you should be able
to add:

  <graphics type='spice' port='-1' tlsPort='-1'
autoport='yes'
            listen='127.0.0.1' />

http://libvirt.org/formatdomain.html#elementsGraphics

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
virt-df lists disk usage of guests without needing to install any
software inside the virtual machine.  Supports Linux and Windows.
http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-df/