Forward host UNIX socket to guest TCP port

[Ralph G]

Hello. I've been racking my brain trying to work out if this is possible.

I would like to be able to forward to a guest TCP port, via a host UNIX socket to avoid opening a TCP port on the host. For example:

qemu-system-i386 [...] -nic user,hostfwd=unix:/path/to/socket-:22

and then connect to the VM like:

ssh -o "ProxyCommand socat - unix-connect:/path/to/socket" user@0.0.0.0

QEMU, as versatile as it is, doesn't appreciate my intuited syntax "hostfwd=unix:...". It is also unhappy with:

qemu-system-i386 [...] \
    -chardev socket,id=foo,path=/path/to/socket,server,nowait \
    -nic user,hostfwd=chardev:foo-:22

And:

qemu-system-i386 [...] \
    -nic user \
    -chardev socket,id=foo,path=/path/to/socket,server,nowait \
    -chardev socket,id=foo,host=10.0.2.15,port=22

I already found out how to connect in the opposite direction, **from** guest TCP to host UNIX, via guestfwd -> cmd -> socat. So I feel like there ought to be a way.

If this is not yet a feature I would like to request it, and if it is, please tell me how!

[Thomas Huth (th-huth)]

The QEMU project is currently moving its bug tracking to another system.
For this we need to know which bugs are still valid and which could be
closed already. Thus we are setting the bug state to "Incomplete" now.

If the bug has already been fixed in the latest upstream version of QEMU,
then please close this ticket as "Fix released".

If it is not fixed yet and you think that this bug report here is still
valid, then you have two options:

1) If you already have an account on gitlab.com, please open a new ticket
for this problem in our new tracker here:

    https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues

and then close this ticket here on Launchpad (or let it expire auto-
matically after 60 days). Please mention the URL of this bug ticket on
Launchpad in the new ticket on GitLab.

2) If you don't have an account on gitlab.com and don't intend to get
one, but still would like to keep this ticket opened, then please switch
the state back to "New" within the next 60 days (otherwise it will get
closed as "Expired"). We will then eventually migrate the ticket auto-
matically to the new system (but you won't be the reporter of the bug
in the new system and thus won't get notified on changes anymore).

Thank you and sorry for the inconvenience.

[Thomas Huth (th-huth)]

This is an automated cleanup. This bug report has been moved to QEMU's
new bug tracker on gitlab.com and thus gets marked as 'expired' now.
Please continue with the discussion here:

 https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues/347