Disable guest agent but retain virtiofs mounts

[msimkunas]

What's the purpose of the guest agent? Is it possible to disable it but retain virtiofs mount points?

--plain option seems to disable everything.

[afbjorklund]

It would require a new option, to keep the mounts in plain mode. Currently plain mode disables them:

func fixUpForPlainMode(y *LimaYAML) {
        if !*y.Plain {
                return
        }
        //y.Mounts = nil  <-- add option for this
        y.PortForwards = nil
        y.Containerd.System = ptr.Of(false)
        y.Containerd.User = ptr.Of(false)
        y.Rosetta.BinFmt = ptr.Of(false)
        y.Rosetta.Enabled = ptr.Of(false)
        y.TimeZone = ptr.Of("")
}

It would keep the "default" mounts for the driver (virtfs/virtiofs), but would not support "reverse-sshfs"

i.e. using reverse-sshfs requires the agents, so it is not for plain (you could sshocker manually instead)

---

The hardest part is probably what the flag and the option should be called, rather than the implementation

Maybe --plain-mounts? ("plain mode but with the mounts"). And something similar for the YAML

[afbjorklund]

Naming discussion has started: #3748

# When the "plain" mode is enabled:
# - the YAML properties for mounts, port forwarding, containerd, etc. will be ignored
# - guest agent will not be running
# - dependency packages like sshfs will not be installed into the VM
# User-specified provisioning scripts will be still executed.
# 🟢 Builtin default: false
plain: true

# Keep the mounts, in "plain" mode.
# 🟢 Builtin default: false
plainMounts: true