Re: [virtio-dev] Re: virtio-input for copy/paste?

[Gerd Hoffmann <kraxel@redhat.com>]

  Hi,

> Right; what I was interested in was whether there would be a way to
> plumb copy/paste through for a VNC or local Gtk display; the guest view
> should be independent of the transport protocol.

Well.  Full-blown cut+paste is quite complex.  spice goes all-in and
supports cut+paste everything both ways.  The minimal thing would be
host -> guest support for "text/plain; charset=utf-8".  Quick google
search suggests the vnc protocol supports just that.

So, what exactly we are talking about?

> Perhaps that way is just to standardise on the virtio-serial channel
> that spice already uses and provide that for other transports;
> but if not then it feels like there should be some standard.

Not that easy I think, the channel is not used exclusively for
cut+paste but also some other, spice-specific stuff.

We could try integrate this into qemu guest agent.

Or use something completely separate.  qemu guest agent works at system
level whereas cut+paste would work on user session level.  spice solves
this by having both system and user daemon, where the user daemon talks
to the system daemon.  With a separate channel you wouldn't need the
system daemon as middle man though.

> > You also need the agent as user interface, so the user can explicitly
> > enable clipboard access for the other side (you don't want do this
> > automatically for security reasons: the guest should not be able to
> > sniff the passwords which you cut+paste on the host from password
> > manager to browser).
> 
> That should be on the host side-UI shouldn't it?

Guest UI too (you can make the same argument the other way around) if we
want support guest->host cut+paste.

take care,
  Gerd