This was dropped on reviewers' request in the revision that got merged,
but reference in two documents was not updated. Fix it.
Follow-up for: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/25918
This is intended to be used with VSOCK, to notify the hypervisor/VMM, eg on the host:
qemu <...> -smbios type=11,value=io.systemd.credential:vmm.notify_socket=vsock:2:1234 -device vhost-vsock-pci,id=vhost-vsock-pci0,guest-cid=42
(vsock:2:1234 -> send to host on vsock port 1234, default is to send to 0 which is
the hypervisor itself)
Also on the host:
$ socat - VSOCK-LISTEN:1234,socktype=5
READY=1
STATUS=Ready.
This imports credentials also via SMBIOS' "OEM vendor string" section,
similar to the existing import logic from fw_cfg.
Functionality-wise this is very similar to the existing fw_cfg logic,
both of which are easily settable on the qemu command line.
Pros and cons of each:
SMBIOS OEM vendor strings:
- pro: fast, because memory mapped
- pro: somewhat VMM independent, at least in theory
- pro: qemu upstream sees this as the future
- pro: no additional kernel module needed
- con: strings only, thus binary data is base64 encoded
fw_cfg:
- pro: has been supported for longer in qemu
- pro: supports binary data
- con: slow, because IO port based
- con: only qemu
- con: requires qemu_fw_cfg.ko kernel module
- con: qemu upstream sees this as legacy
