Re: [pve-devel] [PATCH cluster/guest-common/docs/qemu-server/manager v15 0/12] virtiofs

From: Lukas Wagner <l.wagner@proxmox.com>
To: Proxmox VE development discussion <pve-devel@lists.proxmox.com>,
	Markus Frank <m.frank@proxmox.com>
Subject: Re: [pve-devel] [PATCH cluster/guest-common/docs/qemu-server/manager v15 0/12] virtiofs
Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2025 10:27:37 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <87dd765f-5366-43ad-87da-732c5ff9b149@proxmox.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20250403103442.136958-1-m.frank@proxmox.com>

On  2025-04-03 12:34, Markus Frank wrote:
> Virtio-fs is a shared file system that enables sharing a directory
> between host and guest VMs. It takes advantage of the locality of
> virtual machines and the hypervisor to get a higher throughput than
> the 9p remote file system protocol.
> 

Some thoughts - no blockers though, can easily be done in follow-ups:

- Thinking through my potential use-cases for a feature like this, I think it would be pretty nice
  to expose the 'readonly' flag [1] under 'Advanced', the same way you did it with e.g. "Allow Direct IO"

- I'd remove the "Make sure the directory exists." banner in the "Add Dir Mapping" dialog.
  People get an error message any way when they try to create a mapping and the directory
  does not exist.

- I tried this feature out without reading any documentation first, basically to check for any obvious
  UX issues that are not as clearly noticable if you know how everything works.
  Trying to add a filesystem passthrough, my first instinct was to go to the VM's Hardware
  settings. I was presented with a new "Virtiofs" option under "Add". 
  Maybe this could be called "Directory Passthrough" or "Filesystem Passthrough" to better
  convey what it does? Users might not be aware what "Virtiofs" is if they haven't read the docs.

  Inside the new "Add" dialog I was then stuck at first. It allowed me to select a Directory ID,
  but I haven't created one yet. As a user it was not completely clear what the next step would be
  at this point.
  Maybe this could show a small hint about where to create
  new mappings? e.g. "Directory Mappings can be managed under Datacenter → Resource Mapping" or alike.

- In the documentation it is not really mentioned that one is able to create a
  mapping from the GUI. The text reads like you have to use the `pvesh` command to create it.

- Maybe some table for the available options (e.g. direct io, cache, etc.) with the effects
  and possible values would be easier to comprehend than embedding it into free-flowing text.

As I said, no blockers from my side though :) Great work!

[1] https://gitlab.com/virtio-fs/virtiofsd#faq

-- 
- Lukas

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