docs/interop/qmp-spec: How to force known good parser state

Section "QGA Synchronization" specifies that sending "a raw 0xFF
sentinel byte" makes the server "reset its state and discard all
pending data prior to the sentinel."  What actually happens there is a
lexical error, which will produce one or more error responses.
Moreover, it's not specific to QGA.

Create new section "Forcing the JSON parser into known-good state" to
document the technique properly.  Rewrite section "QGA
Synchronization" to document just the other direction, i.e. command
guest-sync-delimited.

Section "Protocol Specification" mentions "synchronization bytes
(documented below)".  Delete that.

While there, fix it not to claim '"Server" is QEMU itself', but
'"Server" is either QEMU or the QEMU Guest Agent'.

Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>
Message-Id: <20180823164025.12553-2-armbru@redhat.com>
This commit is contained in:
Markus Armbruster 2018-08-23 18:39:28 +02:00
parent 1dfb85a875
commit 72e9e569d0

View File

@ -20,9 +20,9 @@ operating system.
2. Protocol Specification
=========================
This section details the protocol format. For the purpose of this document
"Client" is any application which is using QMP to communicate with QEMU and
"Server" is QEMU itself.
This section details the protocol format. For the purpose of this
document, "Server" is either QEMU or the QEMU Guest Agent, and
"Client" is any application communicating with it via QMP.
JSON data structures, when mentioned in this document, are always in the
following format:
@ -34,9 +34,8 @@ by the JSON standard:
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc7159.txt
The protocol is always encoded in UTF-8 except for synchronization
bytes (documented below); although thanks to json-string escape
sequences, the server will reply using only the strict ASCII subset.
The server expects its input to be encoded in UTF-8, and sends its
output encoded in ASCII.
For convenience, json-object members mentioned in this document will
be in a certain order. However, in real protocol usage they can be in
@ -215,16 +214,31 @@ Some events are rate-limited to at most one per second. If additional
dropped, and the last one is delayed. "Similar" normally means same
event type. See qmp-events.txt for details.
2.6 QGA Synchronization
2.6 Forcing the JSON parser into known-good state
-------------------------------------------------
Incomplete or invalid input can leave the server's JSON parser in a
state where it can't parse additional commands. To get it back into
known-good state, the client should provoke a lexical error.
The cleanest way to do that is sending an ASCII control character
other than '\t' (horizontal tab), '\r' (carriage return), or '\n' (new
line).
Sadly, older versions of QEMU can fail to flag this as an error. If a
client needs to deal with them, it should send a 0xFF byte.
2.7 QGA Synchronization
-----------------------
When using QGA, an additional synchronization feature is built into
the protocol. If the Client sends a raw 0xFF sentinel byte (not valid
JSON), then the Server will reset its state and discard all pending
data prior to the sentinel. Conversely, if the Client makes use of
the 'guest-sync-delimited' command, the Server will send a raw 0xFF
sentinel byte prior to its response, to aid the Client in discarding
any data prior to the sentinel.
When a client connects to QGA over a transport lacking proper
connection semantics such as virtio-serial, QGA may have read partial
input from a previous client. The client needs to force QGA's parser
into known-good state using the previous section's technique.
Moreover, the client may receive output a previous client didn't read.
To help with skipping that output, QGA provides the
'guest-sync-delimited' command. Refer to its documentation for
details.
3. QMP Examples