After looking at the code, it seems that disabling the user.virtfs namespace was the intended behaviour. I have created a patch implementing nesting instead of disabling.
I do not know if this is the right way to do it, but I did some limited testing and it seemed ok. ** Patch added: "nested-virtfs-xattr.patch" https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/+bug/1500265/+attachment/4476979/+files/nested-virtfs-xattr.patch -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of qemu- devel-ml, which is subscribed to QEMU. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1500265 Title: nested 9p filesystem with security_model=mapped-xattr Status in QEMU: New Bug description: I do not know whether this is a bug or a feature request, but on a 9p virtfs with security_model=mapped-xattr, access to extended attributes starting with "user.virtfs" coming from the guest seem to be silently ignored. Would it not be more correct to use some sort of "escaping", say map to "user.virtfs.x" on guest to "user.virtfs.virtfs.x" on host or something like that, so that the guest can use arbitrary attributes. In particular, this would allow nested virtual machines to use nested 9p virtfs with security_model=mapped-xattr. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/+bug/1500265/+subscriptions
