[Pkg-libvirt-maintainers] Bug#614291: Bug#614291: Bug#614291: Unable to establish qemu+ssh connection

[Guido Günther]

On Tue, Mar 08, 2011 at 10:41:57AM +0100, Luca Capello wrote:
> Hi there!
> 
> On Mon, 07 Mar 2011 13:17:16 +0100, Luca Capello wrote:
> > On Sun, 06 Mar 2011 17:37:47 +0100, Guido Günther wrote:
> >> On Sat, Mar 05, 2011 at 03:54:02PM +0100, Luca Capello wrote:
> >> [..snip..] 
> >>> So, I see two solutions, beside the fact that libvirt-bin should depend
> >>> on netcat-openbsd:
> >>
> >> virt-manager invokes netcat on the remote side for console access.
> >
> > Mmm, while I see your point, the only way to assure netcat-openbsd is
> > installed on the remote side is a dependency in libvirt-bin, given that
> > virt-manager is not required on the remote side.
> >
> >>> 1) libvirt-bin calls /bin/nc.openbsd, not elegant, but it avoids any
> >>>    problem in an automatic way
> >>
> >> This would break non Debian systems. We could check for nc.openbsd first
> >> and then fall back to nc though (which would mean fixing up
> >> Autodetect-if-the-remote-nc-command-supports-the-q-o.patch) but in that
> >> case it's probably easier to drop the dependency altogether (which is
> >> what upstream plans to do).
> >
> > I am not sure I have completely understood what you wrote:
> >
> > 1) Autodetect-if-the-remote-nc-command-supports-the-q-o.patch was
> >    introduced because of #573172.  In Debian Both netcat-traditional and
> >    netcat-openbsd have the -q option, but none of the upstream netcat
> >    has it [1][2].
> 
> Actually, I found another bug which is even more interesting: #564034.
> There, the netcat-openbsd maintainer (cc:ed) announced that he had
> restored the original behavior if -q is not given:
> 
> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
> netcat-openbsd (1.89-4) unstable; urgency=low
> 
>   * Quit immediately after EOF if -q is not given (i.e. make the default
>     equivalent to -q 0). This is the standard upstream behavior and what
>     other Linux distributions use. It is different from netcat-traditional,
>     but compatibility with other versions of OpenBSD netcat is more
>     important. (Closes: #502188)
> 
>  -- Decklin Foster <decklin at red-bean.com>  Sun, 18 Apr 2010 20:05:08 -0400
> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
> 
> So, am I right that we do not need anymore the -q patch if libvirt-bin
> and virt-manager depends on netcat-openbsd >= 1.89-4?

No, we still need to support this for interoperability with other Linux
distributions. There are lots of people using virt-manager on Debian to
manage remote RedHat, SuSE, whatnot.
Cheers,
 -- Guido