guestfs-release-notes - libguestfs Release Notes
These release notes only cover the differences from the previous stable/dev branch split (1.18.0). For detailed changelogs, please see the git repository, or the ChangeLog file distributed in the tarball.
You can optionally use libvirt to launch and manage the backend appliance by:
setting LIBGUESTFS_ATTACH_METHOD=libvirt[:URI]
using ./configure --with-default-attach-method=libvirt[:URI]
or calling the API method guestfs_set_attach_method
SVirt (SELinux confinement) is used to secure the libguestfs appliance, if the libvirt backend is selected.
Virtio-scsi is now used by default, if it is available. This greatly increases the number of drives that can be added to a single libguestfs handle (up to 255).
You can now hotplug drives (add and remove drives after launch).
Libguestfs can now handle > 25 disks, in all APIs, tools and tests.
You can label drives when adding them, then refer to them by label (/dev/disk/guestfs/LABEL) instead of having to use device names (/dev/sda).
POSIX Access Control Lists (ACLs) and Linux filesystem capabilities can now be read and written through the API.
Windows Dynamic Disks are now supported. The metadata can only be read (volumes cannot be modified or created). However the data/filesystems in the volumes themselves can be mounted, read and written (Matthew Booth).
Hivex (Windows Registry editing) is now directly supported through the API, making reading or editing the Windows Registry much more efficient.
Several libguestfs APIs were reimplemented so they no longer have any limits on output. The reimplemented APIs are: guestfs_cat, guestfs_find, guestfs_read_file, guestfs_read_lines, guestfs_write, guestfs_write_append, guestfs_lstatlist, guestfs_lxattrlist, guestfs_readlinklist, guestfs_ls.
guestfish touch 'win:c:\new_file' now works as expected.
guestfish has a new --network option, which enables the user network in libguestfs.
You can set GUESTFISH_PS1 to use fancy prompts in guestfish.
rsync, ssh, less and lrzip commands are now available in virt-rescue. In addition, rsync can be used through the API for doing incremental copies.
virt-sparsify uses qcow2 v3 for increased efficiency.
virt-sysprep enhancements:
generate new UUIDs for PVs and VGs
remove the local machine ID (Wanlong Gao)
remove ABRT data (Wanlong Gao)
remove puppet keys and log files (Wanlong Gao)
remove process accounting files (Wanlong Gao)
new --firstboot parameter allowing firstboot scripts for customizing guests
remove HOSTNAME field from ifcfg-eth* files (Wanlong Gao)
miscellaneous improvements for SuSE (Olaf Hering)
remove man pages cache (Wanlong Gao)
remove crash data generated by kexec-tools (Wanlong Gao)
virt-make-fs can now create virtual floppy disks (VFDs).
guestmount has a --pid-file option, which can be used to avoid a race condition between unmounting the filesystem and using the underlying disk image.
Full-featured Lua bindings have been added in this release (thanks to Jerome Vuarand for many suggestions).
In Ruby, optional arguments hash is optional.
In Python, optional arguments now don't use special "sentinel" values, so any integer can be passed as an optional argument.
Erlang bindings now come with examples and tests.
Erlang bindings now handle 64 bit integer parameters correctly.
The automated 'bindtests' now test for 64 bit cleanliness in parameter passing. Several bugs in the bindings were found and fixed as a result.
Better handling of blocking and non-blocking functions should make libguestfs calls more efficient.
Windows guests with unlimited-sized Registries are now supported. By adding the hivex API to the libguestfs API, it is much more efficient and easier to inspect and modify the Windows Registry in guests.
Better support for SuSE guests (Olaf Hering).
Return the architecture of installed applications (John Eckersberg).
Windows 8 is now supported.
Fedora 18 is now supported.
Inspection of ISOs/CDs/DVDs can now use the libosinfo database.
Libguestfs without the appliance can be compiled on Mac OS X (Masami HIRATA).
RHEL 5 is now explicitly supported through the 'oldlinux' branch in upstream git.
PowerPC 64 bit is now supported. Also libguestfs has been examined for endianness bugs and these have been fixed.
A man page for the daemon (guestfsd(8)) is included.
The $HOME/.guestfish history file is now created with 0600 permissions (instead of 0644 before) so it is no longer world readable.
Old versions of both virt-edit and the guestfish edit command created a new file containing the changes but did not set the permissions, etc of the new file to match the old one. The result of this was that if you edited a security sensitive file such as /etc/shadow then it would be left world-readable after the edit.
This issue was assigned CVE-2012-2690, and is fixed in libguestfs ≥ 1.16.
For further information, see https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=788642
acl-delete-def-file
acl-get-file
acl-set-file
canonical-device-name
cap-get-file
cap-set-file
create-flags
device-index
disk-has-backing-file
disk-format
disk-virtual-size
filesystem-available
fill-dir
fstrim
get-cachedir
get-libvirt-requested-credentials
get-libvirt-requested-credential-prompt
get-libvirt-requested-credential-challenge
get-libvirt-requested-credential-defresult
get-tmpdir
hivex-close
hivex-commit
hivex-node-add-child
hivex-node-children
hivex-node-delete-child
hivex-node-get-child
hivex-node-get-value
hivex-node-name
hivex-node-parent
hivex-node-set-value
hivex-node-values
hivex-open
hivex-root
hivex-value-key
hivex-value-type
hivex-value-utf8
hivex-value-value
inspect-list-applications2 (John Eckersberg)
list-ldm-volumes
list-ldm-partitions
ldmtool-create-all
ldmtool-diskgroup-disks
ldmtool-diskgroup-name
ldmtool-diskgroup-volumes
ldmtool-remove-all
ldmtool-scan
ldmtool-scan-devices
ldmtool-volume-hint
ldmtool-volume-partitions
ldmtool-volume-type
ls0
max-disks
mke2fs (Wanlong Gao)
mklost-and-found
mkswap [added label and uuid optional arguments]
mktemp (Wanlong Gao)
nr-devices
parse-environment
parse-environment-list
rm-f
rsync
rsync-in
rsync-out
set-cachedir
set-libvirt-supported-credentials
set-libvirt-requested-credential
set-tmpdir
shutdown [backported to 1.16 and 1.18]
tar-in [added compress flag]
tar-out [added compress, numericowner, excludes flags]
umount [added force and lazy optional arguments]
utsname
xfs-admin (Wanlong Gao)
xfs-growfs (Wanlong Gao)
xfs-info (Wanlong Gao)
xfs-repair (Wanlong Gao)In the C API only:
guestfs_push_error_handler
guestfs_pop_error_handlerqemu ≥ 1.1 is required (≥ 1.2 preferred).
febootstrap ≥ 3.20 is required.
libvirt is optional, but if you want to use the new libvirt backend for launching the appliance then libvirt ≥ 0.10.2 would be required.
Coverity has been run over the complete codebase, and many issues fixed (thanks Ondrej Vasik, Kamil Dudka).
Functions which previously had no optargs can now be converted to ones with optargs, making extending the API much more flexible. Source and binary backwards compatibility is preserved for users of the API.
The way that libguestfs APIs and structures are represented in the generator has changed to use an OCaml struct instead of a tuple. This makes generator descriptions more flexible and easier to understand. For details see commits 39d1a7db and eb185eef.
Separation of the library code into more files:
Launch backends are now located in separate files eg. src/launch-appliance.c, src/launch-libvirt.c.
Generated action code is now split over several src/action*.c files, for faster compilation.
The huge src/guestfs.c file is now split into smaller logical units.
POD (documentation) is now generated using a rewritten Perl program instead of pod2* + shell scripts.
Man pages now contain stable dates (Hilko Bengen).
Skipped tests now exit with code 77, so they appear as SKIP: in make check output.
The parallel mount-local test has been rewritten in C (RHBZ#838081).
Ruby 1.8.5 is now supported (though Ruby ≥ 1.9 is preferred).
Perl bindings can be disabled via ./configure --disable-perl (Wulf C. Krueger). Note that Perl is still required in order to build libguestfs.
Java bindings are now enabled/disabled using ./configure --with-java or ./configure --without-java (Wulf C. Krueger).
New configure options ./configure --enable-code-profiling and ./configure --enable-code-coverage.
Multiple fixes to use of 64 bit integers in language bindings.
The appliance backend now uses sgabios instead of vgabios (Dan Berrange).
The ./run script now sets enough environment variables that you can run OCaml, Python, Ruby, Java, GJS, Erlang, Lua programs.
./run --test flag for running tests with minimal output. It also prints the time taken to run each test.
The ./run script now builds up paths cumulatively, meaning that you can use ./run twice, or use the libguestfs and libvirt ./run scripts together.
You can extract a list of external commands required by the daemon, making building the appliance on certain distros easier (Olaf Hering).
The virt-rescue command is now tested during make check.
The generator now removes unused generated files. This helps when going back and forth with git rebase, git bisect, etc.
Tests now run in a separate toplevel tmp/ directory in the source. This allows the directory to be labelled for SELinux (sVirt), and also makes it easier to clean up.
make syntax-check now works to a greater extent, and many problems in the main code that were found by syntax-check have been fixed (thanks Jim Meyering).
Emacs mode (-*- foo -*-) has been added to generated files.
Progress bar output is now sent to /dev/tty so it doesn't end up in the regular output of the program. virt-resize and virt-sparsify now suppress progress bars if stdout is not a tty.
There is now a ./configure --without-libvirt option. This is useful for testing that the code still compiles without libvirt.
There is now an internal mini-library for running commands. This allows us to redirect errors from external commands into events.
Code for handling temporary directories and the appliance cache was completely overhauled.
Code for temporarily ignoring/disabling errors now looks like this:
guestfs_push_error_handler (g, NULL, NULL);
guestfs_mkdir (g, "/foo"); /* We don't care if this fails. */
guestfs_pop_error_handler (g);The tests/extra directory has gone. The "extra tests" are now split into separately runnable targets, such as make check-valgrind. Use make help to get a summary of the targets.
The lpj option is passed to the appliance kernel when using TCG. This should improve clock stability (thanks Marcelo Tosatti, Olaf Hering).
libguestfs tools fail with odd error messages if TMPDIR is not an absolute path
Windows 8 guest disks can't be mounted: "The NTFS partition is in an unsafe state. Please resume and shutdown Windows fully (no hibernation or fast restarting), or mount the volume read-only with the 'ro' mount option."
libguestfs: migration to /etc/hostname, /etc/vconsole.conf, /etc/locale.conf
virt-df with two -a options displays incorrect disk image name
libguestfs-test-tool pauses when you use --help option
mke2fs API does not apply block device naming translation to journaldevice optarg
SELinux policy ought to allow qemu to write to unconfined_u:object_r:user_tmp_t:s0
RFE: inspect-list-applications does not return the architecture of RPM packages
inspect-list-applications does not list all installed RPM packages with same name and different versions
guestfish printed paths are not canonicalized
Progress bar output should go to tty(?) stderr(?)
virt-sysprep reports Guestfs.Error("read_lines: fopen: /etc/sysconfig/network: No such file or directory") on some Fedora guests
libguestfs fail to list devices added by add-drive-ro-with-if twice
virt-inspector fail to work with some windows guests
virt-sparsify should use a more robust method to detect the input format
libvirt doesn't label console, serial sockets
virt-rescue in Fedora 18 is completely broken
libguestfs inspection limits registries to 100 MiB
virt-sparsify --compress fails if output is raw format
RFE: allow extra arguments (like --exclude) to tar-out
tar-out should allow (or force) --numeric-owner
guestfish "copy-out / localdir" command fails with "No such file or directory"
Long filenames on NTFS cause tar-out, copy-out etc to fail with error "Cannot open: File name too long"
RFE: Need help designing and implementing selinux policy for libguestfs/sVirt
virt-make-fs / tar-in should support vfat properly
guestfish touch problem - case_sensitive_path API expects the file to exist
Data loss when writing to qcow2-format disk files
lvresize, lvresize-free fail unnecessarily if you don't change the size of the LV: "New size (nn extents) matches existing size (nn extents)"
compress-device-out didn't support bzip2
guestfish unrecognized mount option gives confusing error message
Filenames containing Chinese characters can't be created on vfat filesystems
virt-make-fs cannot create vfat filesystem containing filesystems with Chinese characters
virt-make-fs -t fat fails with an obscure error message
Inspection fails when /etc/HOSTNAME is empty
libguestfs cannot get icon for Windows 8
Ubuntu install CDs from oneiric onwards are not recognized: "multi-boot operating systems are not supported"
libguestfs doesn't recognize Windows Dynamic disks in some configurations, eg. spanned
Not all febootstrap messages are redirected to log callbacks
libguestfs inspector code cannot handle /dev/disk/by-id/* paths
part-get-bootable gives wrong result with an unordered part layout
guestfs-examples(1), guestfs-faq(1), guestfs-performance(1), guestfs-recipes(1), guestfs-testing(1), guestfs(3), guestfish(1), http://libguestfs.org/
Richard W.M. Jones
Copyright (C) 2009-2023 Red Hat Inc.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
To get a list of bugs against libguestfs, use this link: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi?component=libguestfs&product=Virtualization+Tools
To report a new bug against libguestfs, use this link: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?component=libguestfs&product=Virtualization+Tools
When reporting a bug, please supply:
The version of libguestfs.
Where you got libguestfs (eg. which Linux distro, compiled from source, etc)
Describe the bug accurately and give a way to reproduce it.
Run libguestfs-test-tool(1) and paste the complete, unedited output into the bug report.