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guestfs-release-notes - libguestfs Release Notes

RELEASE NOTES FOR LIBGUESTFS 1.14

These release notes only cover the differences from the previous stable/dev branch split (1.12.0). For detailed changelogs, please see the git repository, or the ChangeLog file distributed in the tarball.

New features
Erlang bindings.
virt-alignment-scan is a new tool to check the alignment of
partitions within virtual machines or disk images.
virt-sparsify is a new tool to make virtual machine disk images
sparse.
virt-sysprep is a new tool to make cloning guests from a template
simpler.

guestfish

- New commands setenv, unsetenv, to set environment variables.
- The input file and line number is printed in error messages.
- guestfish progress bars are now a "mini-library" used by other
tools too.

guestmount

- the --live option (for access to live VMs) now works.

virt-cat

- virt-cat can now handle Windows paths and drive letters (RHBZ#693359).

virt-filesystems

- the MBR partition type byte is displayed in --long output.

virt-make-fs

- virt-make-fs now sets the MBR partition type byte correctly,
improving compatibility with Windows (RHBZ#746295).

virt-resize

- virt-resize can now work with guests using extended and logical
partitions, in particular Ubuntu guests.
- virt-resize can now align the first partition of Windows guests,
improving performance. The new virt-resize --align-first option
controls this behaviour.
- The virt-resize --machine-readable flag makes it possible to use
virt-resize from other programs.
- Partitions are now aligned to 128 sectors (usually 64K) by
default. This improves efficiency on high-end storage. The new
virt-resize --alignment option allows the alignment to be
adjusted.

virt-win-reg

- The syntax for deleting registry keys and values is documented
in the man page (RHBZ#737944).

library

- non-printing characters are escaped correctly in debug output.
- GUESTFS_EVENT_ENTER is a new event type generated whenever a
libguestfs function is called.
- the library contains systemtap/DTrace probes.
- the library can now be compiled without hivex (RHBZ#723474).

inspection

- Improve detection of Windows disks.
- Adds support for:
ttylinux - a minimal Linux
Mageia (thanks Michael Scherer)
OpenSUSE and zypper (thanks Michael Scherer, Vincent Untz)
Ubuntu logos (thanks Michael Scherer)
NetBSD and pkgsrc (thanks Michael Scherer)
- Handle some guest types that use /dev/root in /etc/fstab.
- Fix handling of guests with > 26 disks (thanks Matthew Booth)
- Add support for guests with HP Smart Array disks (thanks Matthew Booth)

febootstrap

- FEBOOTSTRAP_KERNEL, FEBOOTSTRAP_MODULES environment variables can
be set in order to choose which kernel to use for the appliance.

misc

- ArchLinux support now working with Linux 3.0 (thanks Erik Nolte)
- libvirt disks marked <readonly/> are now added readonly when
using the virt-tools '-d' option.

Security
(no security problems were found or fixed in this release)

New APIs
compress-out, compress-device-out, copy-device-to-device,
copy-device-to-file, copy-file-to-device, copy-file-to-file,
get-smp, part-to-partnum, set-smp.
The mount API no longer implicitly adds -o sync,noatime options.
add-domain has a new 'readonlydisk' optional parameter to control
how <readonly/> disks are handled.

Internals
- Coverity was run on the source and more bugs were identified and
fixed.
- PCRE library is now required to build libguestfs.
- APIC is now the default for the appliance. You can also enable
SMP support in the appliance.
- OCaml bindings now correctly acquire GC lock during callbacks.
- Out of tree builds should now work correctly (thanks Hilko Bengen).
- ./configure --with-extra="..." can be used by packagers to set
the extra version string.
- zero, zero-device APIs: if the blocks already contain zeroes,
don't write zeroes, so that we don't unnecessarily make the
underlying storage non-sparse.
- is-zero, is-zero-device APIs: optimize these so zero detection is
faster.

Bugs fixed
- 748266 libguestfs should detect versions of qemu which require -machine pc option
- 747290 libguestfs ignores <readonly/> in libvirt XML
- 747287 Misleading error message when permission denied opening a disk image
- 746295 virt-make-fs doesn't set partition ID
- 744795 guestmount --live is not usable
- 737944 virt-win-reg hyphen (delete key) syntax may be wrong, and is not documented
- 733297 ruby event handlers fail with "exception in callback: wrong argument type Proc (expected Data)"
- 731744 libguestfs should escape special/non-printing characters in debug output
- 729887 appliance crashes running aug_init with flags=4
- 729075 libguestfs confuses Hp_recovery partition with Windows root filesystem
- 727178 error: luks_open: cryptsetup: error while loading shared libraries: libfipscheck.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
- 726739 libguestfs: error: aug_get: no matching node, trying to find hostname
- 723474 If hivex and/or pcre not installed, libguestfs fails to compile
- 693359 virt-cat and virt-edit don't handle case sensitive NTFS paths properly
- 678231 virt-inspector reports unknown filesystem UUID
- 671082 libguestfs does not work with kernel-rt
- 666578 libguestfs: unknown filesystem label SWAP-sda2
- 642821 virt-resize falls over on a disk image with a logical swap partition

SEE ALSO

guestfs-examples(1), guestfs-faq(1), guestfs-performance(1), guestfs-recipes(1), guestfs-testing(1), guestfs(3), guestfish(1), http://libguestfs.org/

AUTHOR

Richard W.M. Jones

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2009-2023 Red Hat Inc.

LICENSE

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.

BUGS

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: